


Saorsa, Arc II

by scapegrace74



Series: Saorsa [2]
Category: Outlander & Related Fandoms, Outlander (TV), Outlander Series - Diana Gabaldon
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - World War II, F/M, French Resistance, Showverse AU, Time Travel, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-16
Updated: 2020-08-17
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:48:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 24
Words: 37,812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25943845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scapegrace74/pseuds/scapegrace74
Summary: This story picks up shortly after the first arc of Saorsa ends.  If you haven't already, I strongly recommend that you read the first arc before beginning this story.  It's available on my main page.SPOILERS FOR ARC I BELOWFor those that need a refresher, when we left Jamie and Claire, they had just parted at the stones of Craig na Dunn in December 1943.  Jamie had been conscripted to fight in World War 2, and rather than risk losing another husband in battle, Claire convinced him to travel back to his time, just until the war is over.  Unbeknownst to Claire, Jamie decides to stay in the present and fight.
Relationships: Claire Beauchamp/Jamie Fraser
Series: Saorsa [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1882939
Comments: 167
Kudos: 132





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Like the first arc, this story is the Outlander showverse run through a blender. Unlike the first arc, it is considerably darker. If the first arc was the earlier parts of Season 1 of the show, this part is all Season 3.  
> Some trigger warnings apply, and I will post them at the beginning of the relevant chapters, to avoid spoiling the plot here.  
> Where I've used Gaelic dialogue, it's been translated from English via Google Translator. The French and German are my own. Rather than break up the flow of the text, all but the Gaelic expressions commonly used in the fandom will be translated in the chapter endnotes. Except this one: Saorsa means redemption, or freedom. I considered giving this second part of the story a different name, but decided not to, for reasons that will eventually be made clear.  
> Oh, and I'm Canadian and French-speaking to boot, which means that this fic was brought to you by the letters "u" and "z (pronounced zed)", and that I've never met an embedded clause that I didn't love.  
> A big thank you to all the readers who read and commented on the first part of Saorsa. You made me feel very welcome in a brand new fandom. This story is for you.

March 1944, Somewhere over Northern France

The first sensation was biting cold. Air ripped through his drab clothing like a knife. His eyes were bolted closed, but the wind shrieking in his ears bore testament to the speed at which he fell. He measured time to the pulsing hammer of his heartbeat. When he’d counted one hundred surges of blood, his gloved hands pawed frantically for his rip cord. A massive draught of night air flooded his lungs as the dark parachute unfurled and caught the wind, yanking him like a marionette back towards the heavens.

He finally dared open his eyes, and immediately wished he hadn’t. The stars jigged and whirled in a capricious dance that tied his wame in knots. As he might have anticipated, jumping from an aeroplane was a great deal worse than standing on a ship’s deck in a heaving sea. Swallowing an acrid lump, he focused on the moon, hung like a globular pearl above the western horizon. _Claire._

With lips set in a grim line, he fought back his nausea and steered towards his target. The clouds lay low in the river valley of the Somme, hopefully hiding his approach from any watchful German snipers. The bomber bound for the industrial heartland of Germany from which he had jumped was too high for the drone of its engines to carry to earth. As he floated inexorably to the ground, the only noise to be heard was the pre-dawn lowing of cattle and the persistent rat-a-tat complaint of his heart.


	2. Chapter 1

January 1944, Fort George Military Training Academy, Scotland

“Ye asked fer me, Major.” The tiny office was crowded with cabinets and a solid wooden desk behind which his commanding officer currently sat, so Jamie stood at attention in the doorway, his drill-fatigued shoulders filling the frame.

Major John Grey was the sort of English gentleman he’d once held in high contempt. Meticulous, bureaucratic, and somewhat effete, it also turned out that he was forthright and fair. Jamie had warmed to the man over the past four weeks of basic infantry training, but this summons made him nervous. Every day was a struggle to disguise his utter lack of familiarity with modern military life, which he usually accomplished by careful mimicry of his fellow recruits.

“Yes, Private Fraser. Do please come in and make yourself at ease.”

The major turned his attention back to the thin file open before him. Jamie took the opportunity to observe the man before him. Tidy nailbeds, unblemished skin with only the faintest shadow of late afternoon facial hair, and long eyelashes that curled naturally skywards at the tips. Were he not from a military family and unflinchingly dutiful, Fort George would likely be the last place on earth John Grey would elect to make his career.

Pushing the papers across the desk, Major Grey asked, “How are you finding life in the army, Private Fraser?”

A loaded question if ever there was one, but he had never been one to shy away from candour.

“The drills an’ weapons training are verra good, and I canna argue that a common hardship begets _es_ _prit d’équipe_ , but the food is shite, if ye’ll pardon me sayin’ so. Sir,” he added, for good measure.

Major Grey’s face went through a comic series of contortions as it transmuted from astonishment to ire to barely contained mirth. Jamie watched on impassively.

“Yes, well,” his officer finally said, “no one ever accused the British Army of having culinary aspirations. I’ve been reading through your file, Private Fraser, and I have to confess that I’m somewhat at a loss of what to make of you.”

Jamie shifted uneasily in his tight combat boots. He reflexively raised a hand and found only short-cropped stubble to run his fingers through. He dearly missed his long hair.

“You’re in exemplary health and have excelled at every athletic test we’ve administered. And yet the physical exam performed upon your arrival notes extensive injuries that, quite frankly, would have qualified you for a draft exemption, should you have requested one.”

Upon Jamie’s continued silence, the major continued, “You keep to yourself, even at mealtimes, but just yesterday you doubled back through an obstacle course to assist another man who swears he’s never exchanged a word with you in his life. You don’t get cold or sore, or if you do you don’t complain about it. Your combat instincts are, quite frankly, disturbingly acute. And yet you fail miserably at any mechanical task assigned to you.”

“Ye dinna think I'm a good soldier because I canna work the wireless?” Jamie asked, indignant.

“On the contrary, Private Fraser. I think you’re going to make a wonderfully valiant soldier. Your obituary practically writes itself. Private James Fraser was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross for his brave and self-sacrificing…”

“What’s yer point?” Jamie growled, forgetting for a moment that he was addressing his commanding officer.

“My point, Fraser, is that I can send you to the front with the remainder of your battalion in two weeks’ time and welcome you back in a wooden box by springtime…” Major Grey let that thought hang in the stuffy air for a moment, and then continued, “Or, I can play to your strengths. You’re a lone wolf. Exceptionally adept at hand-to-hand combat. You speak French; fluently, if I were to judge. And if those stripes all over your back are any indication, you’ve already been tortured severely and lived to tell the tale. In my experience, torture victims who spill their guts don’t survive; either their captors kill them once they are no longer useful, or they finish the job themselves out of guilt.”

Jamie emitted a grunt of begrudging respect. John Grey was demonstrating the sort of insight and acumen that had won wars for England down through the ages.

“No’ bad, Major. Ye’ve taken my measure. Wi’ yer permission, lemme return the favour.”

Major Grey acquiesced with a nod.

“The Allies are preparin’ fer a massive invasion of the continent. By sea, I reckon, fer there arenna enough aeroplanes in all the kingdom tae transport the number of troops needed. Normandy or Belgium, if I were tae wager, where the beaches are broad an’ the coastland flat. There’ll be local resistance tae the Germans in Occupied France already, seekin’ information, thwartin’ their supply lines, preparin’ the stage fer the main attack. Ye’re lookin’ fer soldiers willin’ tae risk their lives tae aid in those efforts. Men such as me. I’ll save ye the trouble of askin’. I accept.”

It was well past supper by the time Jamie returned to his barracks and stretched out on his narrow cot. The two men had conversed for hours, each slowly trespassing across the rigid lines of hierarchy that divided them. In the end, they exchanged a firm handshake. Jamie would report to Lieutenant Colonel Tryon in the Intelligence Corps building the following morning. His fellow recruits would be told he failed out. It was a believable ruse, since his lack of mechanical ability was legendary.

As he turned to leave, Major Grey said, “I can’t help but notice that you wear a ring, Fraser. But your file lists your next of kin as a Mr. Murtagh Fitzgibbons. There isn’t some pretty Highland lass waiting for your love letters from the front, is there?”

Jamie closed his eyes, picturing Claire in front of the hearth at Lallybroch, her bonnie curls glowing like molasses and flame. Without looking back, he shook his head. “Nah. There’s no-one waitin’ on my letters. Good evening, Major.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> esprit d’équipe - team spirit


	3. Chapter 2

The winter after Jamie traveled through the stones was a season of mourning for Claire. The joy that had suffused her summer dimmed and dipped low towards the horizon of despair. Were it not for her daughter, she might have simply lain down and refused to rise again.

Bree seemed to miss Jamie as well. Her little head swung about any time the dogs barked in the courtyard and she threw a rare crying fit when a tall red-haired man at the door turned out to be a tenant coming to discuss a sick cow with Murtagh.

The days passed by rudderless, unmoored from the slipstream of momentum that followed Jamie everywhere. Claire grew frustrated with herself. It was not as though she was some passive bystander to her life, looking to her husband for guidance in all things. She had been an independent woman before she married Frank, after all.

The idea grew unbidden, creeping in like silent fog. Perhaps it was born of guilt for depriving the British Army of a competent soldier. Or the realization that the day was fast approaching when the cost of keeping Lallybroch would outstrip any income the estate could produce. But in truth the impulse was largely born from the intrinsic knowledge that she was destined to be more than a wife and a mother.

“Ye’re a healer, Sassanach.” Jamie’s voice last summer after she’d diagnosed a local boy with a large goiter on his neck with iodine deficiency, prescribing him a diet of canned sardines. “God would ne’er want ye to shun yer gift.” “And nor would I,” he added, in case the quietly proud glow in his eyes wasn’t evidence enough of his support.

Her plan was in motion by March. Ned Gowan spoke to the dean of the medical school in Edinburgh on her behalf, guessing correctly that his status as both a lawyer and a man would make his intercession more likely to succeed than if Claire applied through the ordinary channels. She was permitted to attend lectures and practice at the Royal Infirmary, supplementing her nurses’ training so that in two years’ time she would be qualified to practice as a so-called ‘country doctor’. Were it not for the tremendous shortage of physicians on the home front, Claire doubted her presence as a young mother would have been tolerated at all. The whole arrangement stunk of sexism and condescension, but she held her nose because being a doctor to the people of Lallybroch and the surrounding countryside was exactly what she desired, once Jamie returned.

Finding suitable lodging and someone to care for Bree during her long hours away at lectures proved to be easy. Edinburgh was full of women: war widows, young ladies filling jobs previously reserved for men who were away at war, and women such as herself, trying to navigate motherhood and earning a living for the first time. Through a series of fortuitous conversations, she arrived at a former rectory tucked into the shadow of Arthur’s Seat where a kindly middle-aged widow named Mrs. Graham rented rooms to women for a reasonable fee.

“She’s a bonnie one, wi’ her wee curls all about,” Mrs. Graham cooed as Brianna hid her sleep-smudged face in Claire’s collar. They stood in the entrance hall, a small duffel bag at her feet.

“She’s a bit shy,” Claire apologized, shifting her daughter from one hip to the other, her arms sore after a long day holding Bree’s ever-increasing weight.

“Och, dinna fash my dear. I ken a thing or two about bairns, havin’ ‘ad four of my own, and grandbabies besides. Give her here, then.”

Claire reluctantly released her daughter to the older woman’s care, expecting a piercing complaint at any moment. Brianna was generally an easy baby, but she was already displaying a strong-willed temperament to match her mother. Instead she appraised Mrs. Graham with serious brown eyes that reminded Claire so much of Frank, before settling comfortably into her embrace.

“There now. The wee lady and I will be in the parlor, getting acquainted. Just ye go an’ get settled in yer room, Mrs. Fraser. I’ll shout if ye’re needed,” Mrs. Graham declared.

“Really, you needn’t…”

“Ach, lass. If ye’re ginna show those men wha’s what at yon university, ye’re ginna need tae take a lil’ help when tis offered. Now off wi’ ye!”

Mrs. Graham was a godsend. She minded Bree in the evenings while Claire studied, fussing over the two of them like a mother hen. During the day, there were always plenty of other boarders willing to earn a shilling watching over the young girl. Brianna thrived, and Claire slowly let go of her guilt when leaving each day to attack her studies with all her formidable passion.

Contrary to the conventional view of rooming house matrons, Mrs. Graham was not overly meddlesome. She accepted Claire’s explanation that her husband was ‘away at war’ and if she wondered why no letters from the front ever arrived, she kept it to herself. It was an unorthodox time. Claire merely fit in.

The loneliness was hardest late at night, after the other boarders had gone to bed. Bree slept peacefully in her tiny cot, long dark lashes fanning against her chubby cheeks and the tiniest smile on her rosebud lips. It reminded Claire of Jamie, and tendrils of longing and fear ran her through. It was easy to suppress her worries while the mundane struggles of existence suffused her long days. But in the quiet hours past midnight, her imagination and memories ran away with her. His devious grin. The way his voice caressed her name, drawing a dozen different tones from its single syllable. The exaltation with which he took over her body and soul.

And the blind terror that something would keep him from coming back to her.


	4. Chapter 3

April, 1944, Amiens, France

« _T’es une ange tombée du ciel, mon amour._ » The words were heartfelt, even if Jamie’s droopy eyelids and intoxicated slur were feigned. Annalise de Marillac was all the lover, confessor and barmaid a man could ever need, sustaining body, mind and soul in the process. In the past four weeks she had become his whole world. Or at least that was what anyone overhearing them was meant to believe.

 _La cour du roi_ was a disreputable little tavern near the river whose only redeeming feature was a bountiful supply of cheap alcohol. There were whispers that support of both the unpatriotic and monetary kind passed hands between the owner, a pompous bootlicker named St. Germain, and the German occupiers. This explained both the full cellar and mostly empty tables. Jamie was in a unique position to know that the rumours were both true; and false.

« _Tu n’aimes que mon Calvados et ma chatte, mon cher Guillaume._ _Tu n’es qu’un homme, après tout,_ » the blonde replied with a teasing smirk. She liked the tall man, with his Norman features and haunted Nordic eyes. Not to mention that flirting with her patrons was how she made her living. It was altogether normal during wartime to supplement the meagre rations provided by their occupiers with the commerce of her body. To anyone bored enough to pay attention, Guillaume was just another such customer, willing to trade an _écu_ for a hasty fuck in the dusty storeroom out back.

“ _Comme tu dis, madame_ ,” he grinned rakishly, sliding a silver coin across the bar.

Two minutes later they were grinding their mouths and lower bodies together, still fully clothed. Annalise let loose a breathy “O, Guillaume!” just loud enough to be heard through the wooden door.

“This isna going tae be believable if I laugh, lass,” he whispered harshly in her ear.

“But per’aps if I did?” she retorted.

“Stop wastin’ time an’ gimme the co-ordinates, Annalise.” His arms were shaking from the effort of holding the barmaid against the shelves, simulating the act of sex in case anyone should walk in on them.

“Abbeville. In two nights’ time. The usual safeguards,” she whispered between increasingly loud moans, finishing with an impressive screech.

“Christ, must ye always…” He lowered Annalise back to the ground and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth in disgust.

“I do it for you, my Guillaume. You would not want the other customers to question your… performance, n’est-ce pas?” She glanced down at the firm outline of his erection visible through his trousers. “Are you sure you do not want me to…” she made a lewd gesture with her hand that required no translation.

“Nah. I told ye…”

“That you are married. To a rare beauty. The holder of your heart. A queen among women.” He couldn’t decide if Annalise was mocking him or insulted by what she considered his needless fidelity. Either way, he didn’t care. It did have one unintended benefit, however. Thinking of Claire and how she would react if she could see him right now drained every ounce of lust from his body. 

« _Bonne chance, mon petit renard,_ » Annalise uttered as he left the storeroom without another word.

***

The warehouse smelled of fresh fish and moldering wood. Jamie lit up a Gauloise with a grimace of distaste. He couldn’t stomach the acrid taste of tobacco, but the flare of his match and the dim glow of the cherry were useful landmarks in the otherwise black room. Sure enough, the sound of heavy footfalls approached. He could tell by the uneven gait that the man had a bad limp. It was his contact, known to him only as _Loutre_.

“ _Renard_?” a raspy voice asked from a few feet away. It was so dark he could only make out the vague outline of a short, stocky man.

“ _Oui_ ,” he answered succinctly. His French accent was passable, but the fewer words spoken the better.

“ _Votre livraison est dans la troisième boite auprès de l’entrée_.”

« _Et la cible?_ »

« _L’écluse,_ » the man responded derisively, as though that should have been self-evident. It had been, but it never hurt to be certain. It wouldn’t do to be destroying the wrong target.

His contact shuffled away into the night without even the perfunctory formalities of leave-taking. Jamie’s mind was already too pre-occupied with his task to notice. He used the hilt of his _sgain dubh_ to prise open the third wooden crate in a small pile near the door, careful not to break his only weapon. Inside lay a grimy cloth sack, filled with four sticks of dynamite. 

“ _Ifrinn!”_ he swore and quickly ground out his cigarette beneath his boot.

The missions he was given were never the same. Each varied in approach, in location, in the available tools, and in the scale of destruction left in its wake. The only common factor was that he was to cause maximum disruption to the supply lines of the German army in northwestern France, without giving away the location of the imminent Allied invasion or getting himself caught.

It turned out that Major Grey had been correct. He was very good at his job. His years as a mercenary and then a Jacobite had seen to that.

Stripping down to his undergarments, he tore a length of cotton from his shirt and stuffed the remnants into the cloth sack, covering the dynamite. The hinges of the warehouse doors were caked with a lifetime of grease, and he carefully applied the thick black lubricant to the cotton, smearing the leftovers onto his face and hair. If he was apprehended wandering the quay in his skivvies, he at least wanted to look the part of a drunken vagrant.

Approaching the last in a series of downstream locks, he slid into the cold, grimy water like a shadow, holding the sack over his head. He waded towards the hulk of ancient timbers and rust that formed a weir holding back the waters of the Somme, making the sluggish waters navigable for modern shipping. A light was glowing in the tiny lock-keepers cottage, but for the moment there were no other signs of life. He had to work quickly.

A fissure in the weathered timber was just large enough to hold the four sticks of dynamite snugly. He tied the oily cotton wick to the nearest explosive and ran it along a supporting beam as far as it would stretch. Now came the tricky part. He had no idea how long his make-shift fuse would take to burn down. Too slowly, and it might catch the eye of a passer-by or snuff out in a gust of wind. Too quickly, and he would blow himself to bits.

Striking a dry match against a giant iron brace, he lit the fuse and waited just long enough to be certain it had caught. Instead of returning towards the nearby quay, he balanced his bundle of clothing on one shoulder and paddled awkwardly into the slow-flowing current, aiming for a copse of willows on the far embankment.

He had donned his mostly dry clothing and was rinsing the grime from his skin when the night sky transformed into a blinding pulse of light. The ground beneath his feet shook. A miniature tidal wave of brown water and debris rushed past his hiding place, followed by several beats of echoing silence, then the barking of dogs and startled voices calling out into the night.

He dropped the empty sack into the ebbing flood and struck off into the adjoining woods. By morning, he would be asleep in his cramped attic room in Amiens.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> T’es une ange tombée du ciel, mon amour - You are an angel fallen from heaven, my love  
> La cour du roi - The King's Court  
> Tu n’aimes que mon Calvados et ma chatte, mon cher Guillaume. Tu n’es qu’un homme, après tout. _ You only love my Calvados (apple brandy) and my pussy, my dear William. You are only a man, after all.  
> Comme tu dis, madame - As you say, madame.  
> Bonne chance, mon petit renard. - Good luck, my little fox.  
> Loutre - Otter  
> Votre livraison est dans la troisième boite auprès de l’entrée. - Your package is in the third box near the entrance.  
> Et la cible? - And the target?  
> L’écluse - the river locks


	5. Chapter 4

May 1944, Edinburgh, Scotland

Anatomy class was the worst. Claire and two other women sat in the front row of the lecture theatre, their skirts demurely brushing their ankles. Professor Tom Christie was a chauvinist of the highest order and took every opportunity to belittle and demean his students of the ‘fairer sex’. This lecture was no exception.

“The muscular-skeletal development of the adult male torso is a beautiful example of God’s handiwork,” the professor intoned in his grandiose baritone. Claire couldn’t help thinking of Jamie’s body, and didn’t necessarily disagree with the sentiment, although she thought it had rather more to do with his parentage and a lifetime of physical activity. Her attention came back to the lecture as Professor Christie continued,

“… contrasted with the weaker female design, so clearly inferior in terms of strength, a testament to the Creator’s divine plan for a woman to content herself with her role as the nurturer of offspring and steadfast keeper of her husband’s hearth…”

Claire must have scoffed aloud, for Professor Christie swung his hawk-like gaze in her direction, leaning over his lectern.

“Have I said something that amuses you, Mrs. Fraser?” he asked in a deceptively placid tone.

She tried. She really did. She needed to maintain her excellent standing in each of her courses in order for the university’s administration to overlook the fact that she was intending to become a doctor while married with a young child. She could upbraid the professor in the privacy of our own thoughts. She could laugh about it later with Mrs. Graham. She could… oh, hell.

“Not at all, Professor Christie. I was simply wondering if the topic of today’s discourse was theology. Or the Romantic poets. I don’t recall either from the syllabus.”

There was a shocked gasp in the otherwise silent lecture theatre. The professor opened and closed his mouth mutely, his face growing increasingly purple with rage. Claire braced herself for the coming onslaught, praying that her sharp tongue hadn’t just torpedoed her medical career.

What followed was a stand-off of indomitable wills, with neither the venerable academic nor his obstinate pupil willing to back down. The following afternoon, Claire found herself seated across from Alexander Fleming himself, feeling rather foolhardy that she was coming to the famous biologist’s attention as a result of a peevish altercation with one of her teachers.

“My Lord Rector,” she began, hoping her voice wasn’t shaking. “I am tremendously sorry that this… situation has required your involvement. You have my word that such insubordination won’t happen again.”

Dark eyes peered out from beneath overhanging brows, assessing her.

“You began your training as a nurse, I believe, Mrs. Fraser,” he stated, not really asking a question.

“Yes, my Lord Rector. In London.”

“I’m sure you’ve had the opportunity to observe, then, that the medical profession is not a hospitable environment for women.”

Claire’s hopes plummeted towards her stomach. She wasn’t only going to be denied a chance to become a doctor, it was going to happen at the hands of one of her heroes, the man who discovered penicillin.

“My Lord Rector, if you would speak with my other professors, I assure you that you would find that…”

A raised hand halted her impassioned plea for a stay of execution.

“My wife is a nurse. Did you know that, Mrs. Fraser?” She shook her head at this _non sequitur_ , too emotional to speak.

“When I first published my research regarding penicillin, no-one paid any attention. Men like Professor Christie, the old guard of the English medical establishment, laughed and turned their backs. I was the crazy Scottish doctor who claimed that mould could cure disease. It was only because of the continuous support of my wife, and her certainty that what I’d discovered was going to change the world, that I persisted. My name will be recorded by history, but it was her tenacity that saw the thing done.”

“She sounds like a wonderful woman,” Claire said, sincerely moved by the story of yet another outsider trying to prevail over the established order.

“She is. And she is the reason why you are here, Mrs. Fraser. Think of the lives that may yet be saved, if only the Professor Christie’s of the world do not hold sway.”

“I’m afraid I don’t…”

“Do not give up, Mrs. Fraser. I am certain you will make an excellent doctor.”

She smiled tremulously, amazed at this unforeseen show of solidarity.

“I won’t, my Lord Rector. In fact, I’m afraid I don’t know how.”

Professor Fleming clapped his hands together once and rose. “Very good. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must attend to other administrative matters.” Claire rose as well and extended her hand to shake.

“Thank you. Truly, my Lord Rector.”

“You are most welcome, Mrs. Fraser.”

She was almost out the door before she had a parting thought.

“My Lord Rector, what is your wife’s name?”

“Sarah. Sarah McElroy,” he answered with a curious cock of his head.

“I won’t forget her name, sir.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Interesting historical aside: Alexander Fleming really was the rector of the University of Edinburgh Medical School, but not until 1951. I used a little creative license. And his wife really was a nurse named Sarah McElroy. The part where she is responsible for promoting his discovery of penicillin is fiction (so far as I know).


	6. Chapter 5

May 1944, Amiens, France

The pace of Jamie’s missions steadily increased until, by the middle of May, he was heading out almost every second night. Much to his relief, this meant he could no longer credibly visit Annalise every time he received new instructions. He was intercepted instead by an ever-changing coterie of couriers, each bearing only a partial message which he was responsible for piecing together and interpreting. Occasionally he interpreted incorrectly and arrived at a location to find no local liaison there to furnish the final details. But twelve out of fifteen missions were successful, and that was a dozen ways in which Germany’s military might had been curtailed and her focus diverted. Jamie thought of his role as analogous to the Scottish midge: individually quite insignificant, but capable of driving someone to mental distraction through repetitive and dogged tenacity.

One thing was certain, his efforts were being directed by an unseen but insidious source. He could sense the cruel beauty behind each planned operation. There were rumours that British support to the French Resistance was led by a mysterious man known only as the Wolf. He was said to be hidden deep in the French Alps, co-ordinating the work of untold covert agents such as himself through a supply line of coded messages transmitted via ham radio.

Like most rumours during wartime, Jamie assumed it was mostly apocryphal. Besides an indirect means of contacting the Intelligence Corps back in Britain and a cyanide pill kept on his person at all times, Jamie had no traceable ties to the British Army. He had no knowledge of his fellow agents, their missions or the details of the forthcoming Allied invasion. If captured, there would be nothing worth torturing him for; and the pill, in case his captors disagreed.

***

Walking back from the docks one evening in late May, where he earned a meagre living loading and unloading freight, a strange man fell into step beside him.

“ _Bonsoir, Monsieur Renard_.” The man had a shrill voice and spoke too loudly for Jamie’s liking.

« _Vous me trompez pour quelqu’un d’autre, monsieur._ _Je m’appele Raymond. Guillaume Raymond,_ » he replied, picking up his pace towards home.

“ _Comme vous préférez. Peu importe, j’ai un message pour vous, de la part de Monsieur Leloup._ »

Jamie stopped at the opening to a blind alley, rounding on the man and taking his measure for the first time. He was middle-aged, perhaps fifty, with lank black hair and a swarthy appearance. His body was lean and wiry, with the weathered look of someone who lived their life out of doors. A _maquisard_ , perhaps.

“ _Et qu’est-ce qu’il dit, votre Monsieur Leloup?_ ” Jamie stated noncommittally, glancing left and right to make certain they weren’t overheard or attracting unwanted attention. This use of codenames while conferring a mission was new and it made him anxious.

« _Le pont de la voie ferrée au-dessus de l’Oise. Il y a deux nuits._ »

« _Et ma liaison?_ » he asked, dropping the pretense of having no idea what was being discussed.

« _Aucune. Vous serez toute seule._ »

« _Impossible!_ » Jamie erupted. A target of that magnitude would require careful planning, a veritable powder keg of explosives, and at least two other sets of eyes to keep watch while he scaled underneath the bridge.

« _Impossible ou non, c’est ça votre mission. Nos suzerains arrivent, Monsieur Renard._ » Without another word, the strange man slunk off into the night. Jamie hardly noticed; his attention focused on the last part of the message. Our overlords are arriving, the man had said. He had to believe the use of the word wasn’t a co-incidence. Operation Overlord, the codename for the Allied invasion of Europe.

***

Two nights later, Jamie crouched near the bank of the Oise river, the scaffolding of a railway trestle cross-hatching the star-filled sky to the west. He’d been waiting for hours for the full moon to set, or at least a decent covering of cloud to blow through. A little light was useful when climbing several hundred feet in the air, but even his dark clothing and black cap would not disguise him on a clear night such as this.

He’d been close to abandoning the mission twice: first, when he couldn’t locate a sufficient supply of portable explosives, and more recently when a dog from a nearby farm had barked incessantly for nigh on twenty minutes. Annalise had tapped into her underground network and secured enough dynamite to light the sky from here to Paris, and the farmer had eventually cracked a window and abused his watchdog into silence. Still, something wasn’t right, and it wasn’t simply the eerily still night. If it hadn’t been for the messenger invoking Operation Overlord, he would be on the road back to Amiens.

He couldn’t deny the excellence of the intended target. Sitting as it was on the main supply line between Paris and the northwest, dismantling the bridge would cripple the German army in the region for weeks while its replacement was built. If the Allied invasion was imminent and proved to be successful, destroying it would also cut off the main line of retreat for their foes. But its position as a point of vulnerability also meant that it deserved to be closely watched. He’d scouted up and down the riverbanks during daylight hours, disguised as a humble fisherman with a wicker basket and long wooden pole. There was a German pillbox about two hundred yards upstream, but it was overgrown with vines. It seemed too good to be true that the enemy had left such a vital position undefended.

Around four in the morning the moon finally set. The sun had yet to tease the eastern horizon, and Jamie calculated he had about an hour to set his explosives, light a fuse and escape. He’d selected a series of joints under the northern span that, once destroyed, would weaken the bridge to the point of certain collapse. He climbed quickly, not bothering to look down to see if he was being observed. It was too late now to do anything about it if he was. Silently blessing the long yards of proper fuse Annalise had furnished, he was almost finished setting the charges when a blinding light filled the previously black sky. He slammed his eyes shut. His first thought was that the explosives had accidentally ignited and that he was dead. But instead of the thunderous boom of detonation, he heard a loud voice speaking French with a German accent.

« _Halt! Mettez vos mains en l’air!_ »

The light came from a spotlight mounted on the back of a boat that had silently slipped downstream as he worked. Behind the glare, he could hear rifles being cocked. Time slowed to a syrupy drip. This had always been his fate, he understood with sudden clarity. He was a soldier, and he would die at the hands of his enemy: the British at Culloden or the Germans in France, it made no difference. There was nothing about his life that he regretted, not even misleading Claire into believing that he’d traveled through the stones. At least she could imagine him safe but trapped in the eighteenth century, instead of knowing he was dead in her own time. She would see to the future of Lallybroch, as much for Brianna’s sake as his own.

It was with his mind full of thoughts of his love, their daughter, and the peaceful green meadows of home that his fingers grasped a match from inside the satchel strapped around his shoulders, struck it soundly against a metal bolt, and lit the fuse. As he was bound for eternity, he might as well take the bloody bridge with him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bonsoir, Monsieur Renard. - Good evening, Mr. Fox.  
> Vous me trompez pour quelqu’un d’autre, monsieur. Je m’appele Raymond. Guillaume Raymond. - You've mistaken me for someone else, sir. My name is Raymond. William Raymond.  
> Comme vous préférez. Peu importe, j’ai un message pour vous, de la part de Monsieur Leloup. - As you like. Either way, I have a message for you, on behalf of Mr. Wolf.  
> maquisard - a local member of the French Resistance  
> Et qu’est-ce qu’il dit, votre Monsieur Leloup? - And what does he say, your Mr. Wolf?  
> Le pont de la voie ferrée au-dessus de l’Oise. Il y a deux nuits. - The railway bridge over the Oise River. In two nights' time.  
> Et ma liaison? - And my contact?  
> Aucune. Vous serez toute seule. - No-one. You'll be alone.  
> Impossible ou non, c’est ça votre mission. Nos suzerains arrivent, Monsieur Renard. - Impossible or not, that is your mission. Our overlords are arriving, Mr. Fox.  
> Halt! Mettez vos mains en l’air! - Freeze! Put your hands in the air!


	7. Chapter 6

June 1944, Edinburgh, Scotland

Claire was ebullient as she walked back to the rectory through the endless dusk of Scottish high summer. Her first semester at medical school had been a resounding success. While her ambition to become a doctor was tolerated at best and quietly scorned by many, her teachers couldn’t deny her apparent aptitude for the science of healing. Just this afternoon she had assisted in the excision of a particularly intractable intestinal tumour, and the supervising surgeon had commended her steadiness with the forceps. Brianna was thriving, Murtagh had personally delivered twenty-one bales of wool to the mill in Galashiels in exchange for nearly eight hundred pounds, and the Allied landing on the beaches of Normandy had secured a vital bridgehead towards the eventual defeat of Germany.

Not for the first time, upon hearing the news of thousands of soldiers dead or wounded during the invasion, Claire was relieved that Jamie was far removed from the carnage. She had to believe that he was safer in his own time, where he knew how to fight and had fellow Jacobites who would shelter him. It was only for another eighteen months, and then they would be reunited at Craig na Dunn. She couldn’t wait to see his beloved face, and to witness his reaction when she told him that she’d become a doctor in his absence.

Mrs. Graham greeted her in the entryway of the rectory. She too was positively beaming from ear to ear.

“Ye’ve a visitor, lass,” she announced before Claire could even remove her shoes.

“Oh? That’s funny. I’m not expecting anyone.” It was probably one of the other girls from the university.

“Aye, he mentioned ye would no’ be lookin’ fer ‘im.” Mrs. Graham grinned like she knew the punchline to a particularly good joke.

“Him?” Who could it be? Murtagh?

“Och, lass, I canna wait tae tell ye! Tis yer husband!”

Claire froze, her hand hovering inches from the buttons of her sweater. There was a moment of utter stillness, and then her heart began hammering like a battle drum.

“Jamie?! Jamie is here?! Oh my god, Mrs. Graham, where? Where is he?!”

“Upstairs, in yer room. I’ll watch o’er wee Bree fer as…” Claire didn’t hear anything further. She was tearing up the stairs two at a time, her nylon-clad feet slipping on the polished floor. Down the hallway to her room, where the door stood ajar. She swallowed the lump of nerves that jammed her throat. Her love. Her Jamie. He was back. She couldn’t force her thoughts past the incredible fact that he stood just a few feet away.

She pushed the door open with a trembling hand. A man in an army uniform stood facing her desk, holding the precious black and white photo of the three of them in the doorway at Lallybroch taken by a travelling photographer the previous summer. She could see it in her mind’s eye. Bree in Claire’s arms, wearing her baptismal gown. Claire in a simple cotton dress, her hair blowing slightly across her forehead. Jamie behind them both, looking imposingly at the camera and yet somehow laughing with his eyes.

“Jamie…” she whispered.

The man turned around, picture frame still in his grasp.

“No, darling. I’m afraid it’s only me.”

A sound like shattering glass and all the blood drained from her heavy limbs like a retreating tide. The world slipped askant, then the floor rushed up to meet her as she fainted dead away.

***

“… imagine she was sae ‘appy to see ye, Captain Fraser.” Mrs. Graham’s voice floated in the darkness.

“Undoubtedly. And it’s Captain Randall, if you please.” 

She kept her eyes closed, feeling a cool cloth brush against her brow and a feminine hand lift her neck so that her head rested on a pillow.

Frank. Frank Randall, her late husband, was alive and standing in her rooming house in Edinburgh. She couldn’t catch her thoughts. They were rushing through her mind so quickly that she felt sick to her stomach. Frank was alive. Jamie was dead. No, not dead. Gone away through the stones. Not in Edinburgh after all. She was in Edinburgh, at medical school. Frank was at war. No, Jamie was at war. Still, Frank was dead, but he wasn’t. If Frank was alive, did that mean Jamie went to war? Her stomach pitched and she groaned.

“There, she’s coming around,” Mrs. Graham announced needlessly. “I’ll leave ye two tae… get reacquainted. Call down, if there’s anything ye need.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Graham.” The sound of retreating footsteps, then a door closed on the life she had, not ten minutes before, been looking forward to with such hope.

She opened her eyes but refused to look towards Frank where he sat on the neatly made bed.

“Did you want some water? Mrs. Graham fetched you a glass earlier,” Frank offered.

“No. Thank you.” She stared at her feet. There was a run in her left stocking.

The silence was interminable.

“She’s… uh… she’s very pretty. I assume she’s mine?” It took her a moment to realize Frank wasn’t referring to Mrs. Graham, but rather to Brianna, whose picture he still held.

“Of course she’s yours, Frank,” she replied, already exhausted by this conversation.

“Well, it’s understandable that I might have doubts. After all, I returned to Lallybroch only to find that I was no longer laird of my own estate. The new laird, a Scot, turned the running of the farm on its head and then left to go to war. My erstwhile wife, meanwhile, who I distinctly recall telling to remain in the Highlands for her own safety, decamped to Edinburgh where she is attending medical school, of all things. So you can see how the parentage of your child might be called into question, given everything else I have learned in the past week.”

“I thought you were dead!” she yelled, pivoting in his direction at last.

Frank looked momentarily contrite, but then his face hardened into a cruel mask.

“Your joy at finding me among the living is truly heart-warming, my dear. Tell me, was the ink dry on the army’s letter before you took him into our bed?”

She shot to her feet, ignoring the peeling of bells in her ears. “How bloody well dare you, Frank Randall? You don’t get to reappear in our lives and criticize the actions I took in order to carry on! As far as I knew, you were deceased, I was pregnant, and there was an entire estate looking to me for its survival. Jamie arrived and…”

“Is that his name, your Scot? Jamie?”

“Yes,” she said, trying to calm herself. She needed to keep her wits and yelling at Frank would serve no purpose. “James Alexander Malcolm Mackenzie Fraser.”

“Interesting name. Did you know that Lallybroch used to be the clan seat of the Frasers? Before the Rising?”

“As a matter of fact, I did. What does that have to do with anything?” Claire prevaricated, worried that Frank’s familiarity with Scottish history would somehow reveal Jamie’s true identity.

“Only that he sounds like a con artist, like some fraud who took advantage of a grieving widow to worm his way…”

“Now hold on!” Claire interjected, forgetting her plan to stay calm. “You know nothing about him! And moreover, you know next to nothing about me if you think that I’d be so gullible as to fall for some charlatan’s scheme. I’m not some wilting wallflower who needs a man around to guide me. I’m studying to be a doctor, for Christ’s sake!”

Frank set the picture frame down on the nightstand and stood, walking to the window. She noticed that his uniform hung loose on his frame. When they’d married, he’d been supple and lean, but now he was positively gaunt. She wondered for the first time what had happened to him, and how he came to be back in Scotland.

“A doctor!” Frank scoffed. “Yes, well, now that I’m home you won’t have to persist with that foolish nonsense. I’ve consulted my lawyer and…”

“Wait a second. You’ve spoken to your lawyer?! Before you even came to speak to me? Before you met your daughter for the first time?” Claire was enraged. The only coherent thought she could manage was ‘Jamie would never…’. She’d long understood that her love for Jamie was deeper than any feelings she’d had for Frank in their brief time together. But she now realized that her feelings for Frank could never measure up to those for Jamie. They were different men, and if she had to choose between them, the winner was abundantly clear.

“I did,” Frank continued. “I wanted to know where we stood, legally speaking.”

“And? Where do we stand, Frank? I’d dearly like to know,” she responded with ice in her tone.

“Our marriage is valid and binding. The British Army never registered my death, so I remain your lawfully wedded husband. By your own admission, Brianna is my child and heir to Lallybroch. And that, my dear, makes you a bigamist.”

***

Brianna hid her face in Mrs. Graham’s bosom while Frank and Claire stood awkwardly in the parlour. The tension was so thick, she was finding it hard to breathe. Frank had asked to meet his daughter but was showing no particular inclination to hold her in his arms, for which Claire was grateful. Mrs. Graham watched on with worried eyes. 

After a brief kiss that did nothing to warm the chill on her skin, Frank left. The rooming house rules forbade overnight guests, so he retired to a hotel. He would collect the two of them in the morning for the long drive back to Lallybroch.

Claire took a deep breath, grounding herself, once the door closed behind him.

“Mrs. Graham, I’m terribly sorry but I must ask a favour. Several, actually.” At the woman’s nod, she continued. “I need to use your telephone to contact Mr. Ned Gowan. If I can manage to locate him at this hour in the evening, I’ll need you to watch Brianna while I go out. I shouldn’t be longer than an hour. I can only imagine what you think of me right now, but I don’t have time to explain. I don’t even know if I could.”

“Ye dinna ‘ave tae explain yerself tae me, Claire. I ‘ave but one question, and it demands answerin’,” the older woman replied.

“What’s that?” Claire braced herself for any manner of insult or aspersion.

“That man, Captain Randall, do ye believe he may harm ye? Ye or the wee lady here?”

Claire paused. Her first instinct was to say no. While she admittedly hadn’t known Frank for long before their hasty marriage and his deployment, he had never shown any tendency towards violence or malice. His placid nature was one of the things that drew her to him. But the man she had just encountered upstairs was not her Frank. There was a streak of something dark that ran through him now. His behaviour was callous and cruel, regardless of the provocation she might have given him. In short, he was a stranger to her, despite being her husband.

“I honestly don’t know,” she finally answered.


	8. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning: brief but detailed description of psychological and physical torture of a Nazi prisoner of war.

There was a place, many days’ journey across the landscape of his mind, where all the threads that held the fabric of the universe together became distinct. Air: the pained labour of his lungs and the glorious first inhalation of a newborn child. Water: rippling in eddies down the rocks in a burn yet ripping open the sky with the fury of the ancient gods. Love: a soft haven to quiet a man’s soul, but fierce and vengeful with teeth like knives. 

It was all there, sifting through his fingers like chaff. And then, with a blink, it was gone.

***

June 1944, Somewhere Behind Enemy Lines

Cold settled into his bones from below. His vision was black as spilled ink, and it took him some time to realize it was because he was blindfolded. His first thought was that he was back in the crofter’s hut, the night he met Captain Randall, and everything that had passed since had been a colourful hallucination. The idea cut and bled him, sapping his already diminished strength. No Claire. No Bree. No Lallybroch weathering the centuries in proud solitude. His muscles spasmed as he prayed for death to find him swiftly.

***

There had been the angry mechanical chatter of gunfire, scattering splinters of wooden trestle into the air around him. The serpentine hiss of a well-lit fuse. Below was a yawning emptiness that represented freedom, capture or death in equal measures. Taking a deep breath, he launched himself into the void. The river swallowed him in a single, hungry gulp. From within its depths he watched as flames engulfed the sky. As he rose to the surface, burning beams were landing in the water all around him. The air smelled of creosote and cordite. Something heavy hit his head, and then the blackness began.

***

The substance beneath his buttocks was hard and rough, but clearly man-made. Still bound and blind, he made a mental scan of his body. He was naked, and terribly cold. Nothing felt broken or bleeding, but his head throbbed in time to his heartbeat. The space smelled sharply of urine, and he guessed he had soiled himself while unconscious. He listened for clues. Even without sight, he could sense the room he occupied was relatively small, and he was its sole occupant. Based on the hungry ache in his wame, he’d already been there for some time before waking.

With a jolt of panic, he used his left thumb to rub against his annular finger. By some miracle, the ring Claire gave him was still there. Despite every other circumstance, it gave him a sense of inner calm. His Sassenach was out there, and she’d given him this token as a sign of her faith that he would return to her.

He remembered falling from the bridge, some animal instinct of self-preservation launching him into the river before the explosion. He hadn’t drowned, and the only witnesses to his actions were German. By logical deduction, then, he was now a prisoner of war. It was becoming a distressing pattern.

***

The sound of rusty hinges complaining caused him to jolt awake. Even without his sight, he could sense daylight and a draft of fresh air coming from the open door. It was nearby, to his left. The tread of heavy boots approached. His heartbeat spiked, head lowered to shield himself from a coming blow.

The footfalls stopped directly in front of him. Something metal scraped against the floor. Without warning, his blindfold was ripped off. Sparks of pain sealed his eyes shut, tears leaking down his cheeks. By the time he was able to open them again, the visitor was gone, leaving a tray of lumpy gray matter on the floor near his thigh.

As he’d guessed, he was held in a compact, windowless space, perhaps ten feet across, with a concrete floor and walls of rough timber. His hands remained bound, so he slid sideways until he could tip onto one side. He ate like an animal, chasing the tasteless globs with his tongue until they were gone. Then, exhausted, he fell into a dreamless sleep.

***

“Your name?”

“James Alexander Malcolm.”

“Your rank?”

“Private, First Class in His Majesty’s Army.”

“Are you the one they call The Fox?”

“I dinna ken what ye’re talking about. My name is James Alexander…” His recitation was halted by a boot-kick to his belly, locking his lungs until his lips throbbed.

These interrogations had been going on for days. Always a different SS officer, always the same result. He’d yet to see the outside of his tiny cell, except the brief glimpse afforded through the door as it opened and shut. Grey skies, tall dark trees, no other signs of life. He had no idea where he was, but it was far from the front. There was no whine of overflying aircraft. No rumble of heavy artillery. Just the incessant rote interrogation, one tray of questionable sustenance per day, a canteen of warm water, and the eerie whistle of wind creeping below the eaves of his prison during the interminable spaces in between.

He passed the long hours living inside his memories. Childhood games with his siblings at Lallybroch. The camaraderie of life as a soldier-at-arms. The intricate and fractious loyalties of the Highland clans. And then, when his mind could no longer resist their beckoning call, he dove into the deep welcoming pool of his recollections of Claire. Her radiant smile and frosty scowl. The way her hair always caught the side of her cheek, tendrils of shadow across the nacre of her skin. The full ellipses of her hips and how they felt trapped between his palms. A million tiny details shot across his thoughts like stars. Brilliant. Eternal. Distant and safe. He curled around them and absorbed their scant pinpoints of heat.

***

After weeks of this bleak routine, a new interrogator entered his cell. He wore no uniform. His eyes were narrowly set around an aquiline nose. In his left hand he carried a metal rod, similar to a cane, but with two short forks at one end.

“Good morning, Mr. Malcolm. My name is Doctor August Hirt. How are you doing today?” Despite his thick German accent, the doctor spoke English well. He carried himself with the benevolent ease of a schoolteacher.

Jamie grunted his reply. He’d grown accustomed to being naked around strangers. His captors had furnished him with a pail for his bodily functions, but he was still disgusted by the filth that clung to his skin.

“Very good,” the doctor continued, unperturbed by his reticence. “I’m here today to ask you about the British SOE. I’ll need you to tell me everything that you know.”

“That willna take long, as I dinna ken a thing,” Jamie retorted.

“Ah. You’re Scottish. How interesting. I’ve often heard that Scottish men fornicate with their livestock. Tell me, is that true?” The man spoke as though he had a serious academic interest in the topic.

“Go tae ‘ell,” Jamie growled.

“Yes, well. I can see my colleagues did not overstate your lack of obedience.” 

The German doctor paused, making a show of mulling over the situation. He glanced at Jamie’s hands, bound and held just in front of his genitals. 

“I’m afraid I’m going to need to take off your ring, Mr. Malcolm,” he remarked.

“Nae bloody likely,” Jamie growled, curling his left hand into a weak fist. Claire’s ring had become his talisman, a tangible link to a world outside his cell that lived and breathed in his absence. A world worth dying for, certainly. But more importantly, a world worth living for.

Weakened and bound as he was, Jamie was certain he could overpower his latest tormentor. The Nazi clearly realized this as well, for he capitulated easily.

“Very well. Don’t say I didn’t warn you, though, Mr. Malcolm. Silver is a very good conductor.”

Before Jamie could wonder what he meant, Doctor Hirt raised his metal cane and squeezed the handle. An arc of electricity shot between the two tines, pulsing blue like lightning. The room filled with the hot smell of tar. Jamie flattened himself against the wall behind his back, nostrils wide with fear.

“I’ll ask you again, Mr. Malcolm, tell me what you know about the British Special Operations Executive.”

Jamie raised his chin in defiance, fear sweat already beading on his brow.

“Very well. Spread your legs, Mr. Malcolm. I’ll show you how my people treat vulgar barbarians.”

From outside the isolated building, anguished bellows carried on the high summer breeze.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another historical aside: sadly, Doctor August Hirt is also a historical character. He was a SS major and anatomist who performed unspeakable experiments on the prisoners of Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp in Alsace. Suffice it to say that if his torture of Jamie were true, it would be the least of his crimes. He committed suicide before he could be brought to justice after the war.


	9. Chapter 8

July 1944, Lallybroch, Scotland

“This isn’t working, Frank. I want a divorce.” She let the words hang in the still air, visualizing all the potential sequences of cause and effect they would unleash.

She and Brianna had been back at Lallybroch for three weeks. They spent their days out of doors or in the kitchen with Cook, delaying until the last possible moment before entering the main house and facing her erstwhile husband. Frank spent most of his time in his library, reacquainting himself with his books and doing research. Before the war he had been a graduate student at Oxford, reading history. He’d yet to mention if his plans included returning there after the summer, and whether he would expect her to accompany him. She couldn’t leave Scotland. It was her one link to Jamie.

She’d managed to track down Ned Gowan before leaving Edinburgh. The little lawyer had been sympathetic to her situation but urged caution.

“The very last thing you want to do is incite Captain Randall before you have an escape plan. If it’s safe to do so, bide your time, and I will be in touch once I have more information.”

“More information about what?” she asked. Ned had smiled a particularly oily smile. “Nothing you need sully yourself with, my dear. Trust me.”

So she had packed up their few belongings and driven north with Frank to Lallybroch. She was in between semesters but was expected back at the university in early August. Mrs. Graham was holding a room for her. She had only to figure out how to break free of the marital bonds that tied her to a man she did not love.

***

She and Frank were sitting at the table, sharing a silence that was neither comfortable nor unwelcome, when the telephone rang in the kitchen. She’d instructed Mrs. Fitz to have the device installed when she’d moved to Edinburgh in the spring, as it made it easier to check on the estate while she was away. Frank was delighted with this emblem of modernity and jumped to answer the call. She could hear the somehow plaintive rumbling of his voice through the wooden door. He sounded nothing like Jamie, whose voice rose and fell like the tide, sometimes soothing, other times stormy, but always purposeful and sure.

Since they’d been back at Lallybroch, her thoughts turned to Jamie with alarming frequency. Away in the city, with her days filled with learning and her evenings taken up with Brianna and study, it was only while falling asleep that her mind reached for him. Unable to imagine his current surroundings, she placed him by her side in bed, holding elaborate conversations with him in her head. These often ended with her hands running furtively over her body, trying to recreate the electricity of his touch.

Here at Lallybroch, Jamie was everywhere. His laughter rang in the empty courtyard. The stables smelled like the sharp brine of his sweat. His riding boots lay beside the kitchen door, slumped over like drunken soldiers. She dared not set foot inside the laird’s bedroom, their former dominion of two wanton souls, for fear of the waterfall of remembrance it would unleash. She slept instead in Brianna’s room, and Frank had yet to suggest otherwise.

“You’re never going to guess who that was,” Frank said as he re-entered the room.

He didn’t seem upset, merely bewildered, so she waited for his pronouncement.

“It was James Learmonth. He’s an old friend of my father’s from the Great War.”

“Wait, do you mean Professor Learmonth? From the Department of Surgery?” Claire asked.

“Yes. He was calling to request your return to the university for the next semester. It appears that you made quite an impression on him.” Frank looked perplexed, as though just learning that his wife spoke fluent Mandarin and had been hiding it from him for years.

“I assisted in one of his vascular surgeries. Nothing more than that,” she demurred.

“Nothing more than…. Claire, he’s been made a Commander of the OBE. And he’s specifically asking for you.”

She shrugged, uninterested in Frank’s fixation with rank and status.

“Why did he want to speak with you?” it dawned on her to ask. “If he wants me in his class, wouldn’t it make more sense to be speaking to me?”

“He heard I was back from the war and worried I might have an issue with my wife pursuing a medical career,” Frank replied, as though this was the most natural logic imaginable.

“And do you?” She was suddenly far more interested in their conversation.

“Not when the Chief of Surgery calls and asks for you!”

Claire bit her lip to stifle the giddy laughter that threatened to bubble out of her. Here she had been carefully plotting a way to disentangle herself from Frank so that she could return to school, and instead he was practically insisting she go.

“I wouldn’t want people to talk,” she bluffed. “And what about Bree? Would you want me to leave her here with you, at least until you go down to Oxford?”

Frank visibly paled at the idea of being left to parent his daughter alone, and her heart soared.

“You seemed to have a good arrangement with that woman who ran the boarding house. I don’t see a need to disrupt it. And as for people talking, I shall simply inform them that these are different times, and a working woman no longer a scandalous idea.”

They discussed the logistics of the trip to Edinburgh and decided that Murtagh would drive mother and daughter south and then return with the Vauxhall. Frank was apparently too deep into his research to come along.

“I know these past weeks haven’t been easy, for either of us,” Frank conceded as they prepared to go upstairs to their respective beds. “Perhaps, with a little time and distance, you’ll come to forget about this… infatuation with your Scot.”

That amount of time didn’t exist, Claire thought. She didn’t respond but tilted her head in a vaguely neutral way. Reaching the door to her bed chamber, she shook hands with Frank in a businesslike manner. Before parting for the night, she asked something that had been nagging at her.

“How did Professor Learmonth know that you’d returned from the war?”

Frank looked momentarily confused. “You know, he never said. I imagine he must have heard of it through a common acquaintance. It really doesn’t matter, does it. Goodnight, Claire.”

Closing her door, she let her mirth escape in a giddy laugh. The cunning little lawyer had come through for her once again.


	10. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning: further description of psychological and physical torture of Nazi prisoners of war. Sadly, almost entirely based in fact.

July 1944, Natzweiler-Struthof Camp, Alsace, Occupied France

The doctor didn’t visit every day, and somehow that made it worse. Each time the door squeaked open Jamie froze, terror binding his limbs, awaiting news of his redemption or destruction. He came to yearn for his other interrogators, those who were not Doctor Hirt, as the misery they brought was mundane compared to the anguish of physical torture.

He stopped eating even the meagre rations provided. His cyanide pill had been lost during his capture, but there was nothing stopping him from starving himself to death. Nothing except his memories of home, which held fast to his heart. They bound him to his struggle to live, like waterweed that held a man underwater, when all he wanted to do was breathe the sweet air of deliverance. He had no weapon sharp enough to sever them.

***

Two SS soldiers in olive-green fatigues pulled him upright and out into the blinding sunlight. His legs were atrophied and collapsed under his weight like wet strings. He was dragged, gasping and wild-eyed, across a wide lawn towards a rectangular gravel yard. After six weeks of seeing nothing but his dark cell, the vivid colours and shapes stunned his senses. The camp was on a steep hillside, surrounded by woods and overlooking a wide valley. It was enclosed by a double row of barbed wire fencing, interrupted by squat guard-towers. All told, there were about a half dozen single story buildings, but no sign of other prisoners.

There was a wooden wall along one end of the gravel yard, and as they approached, he could make out bullet holes in its surface. A cold spike of fear seized him. He began to thrash, certain he was being dragged to his execution. The death he had been silently inviting suddenly repulsed him. It was not bravery or honour that had driven his actions, but defeat.

Twenty yards from the wall, his jailers brought him to a halt. He could stand on his own, if he concentrated on locking his knees. A door in the nearest building opened, and four prisoners were marched into the yard. At first glance, he took them for boys, with delicate limbs and close-cropped hair. It was only when they were turned to face him that he realized they were women. Bile rose into his mouth as he realized what he was about to witness.

A familiar pair of hazel eyes looked out at him from one of the skeletal faces. It was Annalise. Horror swirled in his wame. His own torture at the hands of their captors was agonizing, but he could scarce imagine the abuse that could be meted out on a beautiful woman to cause her to look so… devoid of life.

It was a testament to his mental state that he didn’t even consider that he was staring back at her, naked and emaciated, with angry welts between his thighs where the cattle prod had burned his flesh. The worst of these didn’t even show.

A shrill German voice rang out. “On behalf of the Third Reich, I hereby proclaim these prisoners are enemies of the German people. They conspired with the British Special Operations Executive to destroy property of the Reich, and for these crimes they are sentenced to death.”

Jamie met Annalise’s glance, trying to communicate his willingness to somehow come to her aid. He could barely hold himself upright, but he still had his wits and was willing to use them, even if it meant his own death. She shook her head firmly, rejecting the offer. A silent conversation ensued.

_Look in my eyes, lass. Dinna think of anything but me. If this be the last thing ye see before ye meet our heavenly Creator, may it be the face of a friend. Remember the tavern? The sweet perfume of baking bread. Your mouth under mine as we traded confidences. Ye were my only friend, the only anchor I knew in a moving sea. Let me repay the favour._

Four shots rang out. Four bodies collapsed to the ground like empty grey bags. Jamie was dragged back to his cell, nerves jangling with delayed reaction. He collapsed to the concrete floor and clasped his arms around his knees, weeping. Images of Claire, Bree and Lallybroch swam in the flooded river of his thoughts.

He imagined the display of savage violence had been meant to sap his resistance to interrogation. It had entirely the opposite effect. He had gone to war to protect his country, clan and kin. The circumstances might have changed, but he saw a way forward now. He could defeat the Nazis, and he would do it by surviving.

***

Jamie woke to the rumbling of machinery and raised voices. The door to his cell opened wide and a soldier threw a bundle of cloth at him.

“ _Anziehen!_ ” the German barked.

Jamie held up his hands to indicate his bound wrists. In truth, he could probably have broken from the bonds by now, but he was so weak that having the use of his hands was irrelevant.

With a put-upon sigh, the soldier opened his knife and cut the coarse rope. It hurt Jamie’s shoulders to drop his hands to his sides, they had been held in place for so long.

He was donning the clothing – loose fitting pants, a button-less shirt the colour and texture of burlap and a pair of crude leather shoes two sizes too small – when he noticed that the door remained wide open. Hobbling forward, he peered cautiously outside.

On the sloping lawn stood two long rows of prisoners, all in similar ragtag garb. A handful of guards walked up and down the rows, securing the left ankle of each prisoner to the man immediately in front and behind him. There was an air of orderly panic about the whole scene.

 _“Kommen Sie hier!”_ A guard gestured at Jamie with his machine gun.

He limped forward and was promptly attached to the end of one line of men by a manacle and six feet of chain.

There was a buzz all about the camp as the prisoners were marched to the courtyard where he’d witnesses Annalise’s execution several weeks before. Vehicles were being loaded with spare equipment. A barrel belched black smoke and flame as files and papers were dropped into it by the armload by frightened-looking junior SS officers. A large canteen was thrust into Jamie’s hands and he lifted it greedily to his lips. The water was warm and stale. It was the best thing he’d tasted in his entire life.

“ _Marschieren!”_

With a backwards glance at the spot Annalise’s body had fallen, Jamie was tugged forward by the human chain. The long row of captives descended the steep slope and entered a thick forest of fir trees, the carpet of needles muffling everything but the rhythmic clanking of chains and the wheeze of his breath. Even this short downhill walk taxed his feeble strength. Sweat ran down the gully of his spine. Still, he reasoned that if his captors wanted him dead, they had plenty of opportunity to make him so. Something was keeping him alive. He clung to that thought as they reached the valley floor and turned east.

***

“What’s your name, soldier?”

The flat American accent jarred him from his stupor. He was seated against the broad trunk of a tree, utterly emptied by the first day’s march. He hadn’t given a thought to studying the man directly in front of him, so focused had he been on remaining upright and mobile. He did so now.

The man’s skin was the colour of burnt wood and his hair a veritable morass of tight wiry curls. Jamie had seen African slaves during his time as a mercenary in France, and he knew from Claire’s history lessons that the colonies were now populated by many of those slaves’ descendants. This must be such a man. He grew worried he was staring overlong and glanced away.

“I’m Joe. Joe Abernathy. Since we’re gonna be neighbours for a spell, I reckon we should be acquainted.” The hand that seized his own was broad and strong. His arm bounced weakly as they shook.

“Malcolm,” Jamie replied at length, surprised by the throaty catch in his voice. He hadn’t spoken voluntarily in weeks.

“Is that a first name or a last name, Malcolm?”

He thought for a moment.

“Neither.”

***

“Where do you reckon they’re taking us, Malcolm?”

Jamie’s eyes were downcast, trained on Joe’s blistered heels as he marched a few feet ahead. By his calculations, it was mid-September, but the sun still beat mercilessly down on the unshaded road. His military haircut had grown out into a tousled mess, but he missed the protection his longer hair provided for his neck.

“That was the Rhine we crossed yesterday, I’m sure of it. That means we’re in the fatherland. Deutschland proper,” Joe continued.

One of the things he appreciated most about Joe, beside his willingness to stare in the opposite direction when Jamie had to relieve himself, was the fact that he could carry a one-sided conversation without seeming to take any offence at Jamie’s lack of participation.

“Best I can figure, they’re taking us to one of the work camps in Bavaria. Himmler must want to keep his enemies nearby for safekeeping, now that the Yanks and Brits are pushing into France.”

“Who’s that, then?” Jamie asked. He hadn’t heard about the successful Allied landing. That was good. At least his last mission and capture weren’t for nothing.

“Himmler? Heinrich Himmler? Hitler’s right-hand man? Jesus, Malcolm. Where did you say you were from again?”

Given that he’d said all of a dozen words in the week they’d been chained together, Jamie was fairly certain he’d never shared his birthplace. Still, he liked Joe. Behind the charade of his jaunty good humour, he sensed a keen mind and a generous heart. When Jamie wanted to collapse to the hard ground each night, Joe kept him awake long enough to eat his rations. When he felt he could not take another step, Joe’s blistered feet and tuneless whistling led him forward.

“Scotland,” he answered at last. “A wee place no’ too far from Inverness.”

“Huh. You do talk.”

Jamie shrugged and grinned, the half-forgotten gesture strange upon his face.

“So, what did you do to become a guest of the Third Reich, Malcolm?”

“Blew up a railway bridge,” Jamie answered, distracted by a passing convoy of tanks heading west towards the front. They reminded him of a lithograph he’d seen once of a rhinoceros: armoured, lumbering and deadly.

Joe stopped so suddenly Jamie slammed into his back. Dragged forward by the advancing chain of prisoners, the American glanced over his shoulder at Jamie with an odd expression on his face. 

“That was you?” Joe asked after a few minutes had passed.

“Aye. Tha’ was me.”

***

They’d been marching for twenty days. One by one, prisoners had succumbed to exhaustion or illness, their bodies left by the side of the road like useless debris. Jamie knew he should care about their deaths, but every shred of effort was tied up keeping himself from a similar fate. Even Joe’s reliable banter had begun to suffer.

That night Jamie managed to catch a young rabbit that wandered too close to the oak tree where they sat. Breaking its neck with a savage twist, he considered how to strip and gut it without a knife.

“Give it here,” Joe said. Using only his teeth, he bit through the animal’s pelt and skillfully skinned it bare within a minute. Noticing Jamie’s look of awe, he explained, “You don’t grow up poor and black in Kentucky without knowing how to dress your supper by hand.”

He handed the carcass back to Jamie, who closed his eyes and bit into the raw flesh. Blood flooded his mouth, and he felt a visceral thrill. It was the taste of life. Of survival. There was enough meat for each of them to take five bites, but it felt like a feast. Joe’s teeth flashed white in the evening gloom as they shared a brief moment of undiluted pleasure. For the first time in months, Jamie thought about tomorrow.

***

“You got a gal back home, Malcolm?”

He tried not to think about her overmuch. It was too painful, to call forth her memory and have it co-mingle with the ugly, brute present. He couldn’t help picturing her, though. Their daughter was probably learning to walk, tumbling after the lambs in the meadow. His wife would follow close behind, her hair curled around her face, her laughter as warm as the sun.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” Joe continued, observing him. “You seem like the type. What’s her name?”

Sylvan eyes holding his feverish gaze as he woke after his fall through the stones. Salt-water baptism of her tears in the stables one cold October morning. The flare of her fierce mind. The lush welcome of her body. His absolute certainty that his love for her was written by God on the very foundation stone of his soul.

“Claire,” he said before he even realized he had called forth her name. The sound rolled across his tongue like whisky. “Her name is Claire.”

***

“I need ye tae break my finger, Joe.”

They were sitting on the stone curb of a small Bavarian village. A few locals had gathered across the road to stare at them.

“Pardon?”

“My ring finger. I need ye to smash it a’fore we get tae the camp,” Jamie explained without emotion.

“I’m sure I’m going to regret asking you this, but, why?”

Claire’s silver ring started slipping off his finger soon after his arrival at Natzweiler-Struthof. He moved it to his middle finger, where it now spun loosely. It wouldn’t fit over his thumb, and he’d be damned if it ended up in some Nazi war chest. If he broke the knuckle, the swelling would prevent the removal of the ring. It was a testament to the misery he was presently living that thinking up this scheme had been a welcome diversion over the past two days.

He explained his reasoning to Joe, who listened in silence.

“I tried tae break it myself last night by punching a tree, but I couldna do it.”

“Should have used your damn hard head, instead,” Joe commented. “It’s that important to you?” he added after a moment.

Jamie nodded. He couldn’t explain his attachment to the ring. He knew it was just a circle of metal that had no actual influence over his fate. And yet he felt certain that if it was lost to him, he would never find his way back to Scotland and Claire.

Without warning Joe grabbed his left hand where it rested beside his hip, singled out the annular and bent it backwards at an unnatural angle until a meaty cracking sound erupted from the second knuckle. A cold billow of pain washed up Jamie’s arm and towards his wame. After a few minutes of laboured breathing through his nose, he was able to focus on his surroundings again.

"Thank ye, Joe," Jamie wheezed.

“Better slide that ring back where it belongs, before all my hard work goes to waste.” Joe wasn’t looking at him, instead focusing again at the small audience of onlookers across the street.

***

Their march ended at a high wrought metal gate. Of the two hundred or so prisoners that had left the camp in Alsace, only sixty-two remained. Not for the first time, Jamie wondered why the Nazis didn’t just shoot them all and be done with it. There was an absence of purpose to his survival, and the enormity of that absence threatened to swallow him whole.

“Arbeit macht frei,” Joe intoned, reading the lettering above the gate. “Work will set you free,” he translated. “Somehow I very much doubt that.”

“I didna ken ye spoke German, Joe.”

“I can do a great many things that no-one expects a black man to know how to do, my friend. Where we’re going, none of them will protect me from the inescapable fact that my skin remains black.”

Their chains were removed, and they were lined up in the central square of the camp under turrets bristling with machine guns. One by one, the prisoners were brought forward for examination by a Nazi officer. Joe was standing directly behind him, a novel sensation after weeks of looking at his back.

“I need you to promise me something, Malcolm,” Joe whispered urgently. Four prisoners stood between Jamie and the front of the line. He nodded in reply, rather than risk speaking.

“If I don’t get out of here, I need you to deliver a message to my gal. Gail Hawkins. Remember I told you about her? She’s living with her family in Louisville. Logan Street. Can you remember that, Malcolm? The Hawkins family on Logan Street?”

“Joe, I dinna…” His friend was speaking with the passion of a death-bed conversion, and it made Jamie very uneasy.

“C’mon, man. You’d want the same thing, for your Claire. So that she knew. So she could bury you in her heart and go on living.”

“Aye, I would. So ye must survive, Joe, so ye can deliver tha’ message for me, if I dinna make it back to Scotland.”

He heard Joe give a choked laugh. “I suppose that’s fair. So, is it a deal, Malcolm? You’ll tell Gail that I…” he broke off, clearly overcome, and Jamie felt guilty relief at not having to look into Joe’s eyes at that moment. “Tell her, that I meant it. Every last word,” his friend finished. “And I will do the same, for your Claire.”

Jamie had reached the front of the line. The prisoner in front of him was being examined for lice, opening his mouth to show the officer his decaying teeth. Jamie gingerly touched his thumb to Claire’s ring, where it was deeply embedded in the swelling around his freshly broken knuckle.

“Aye, it’s a deal, Joe. And it’s Fraser. James Alexander Malcolm Mackenzie Fraser.” If they were making oaths, it was vital that he use his real name.

“Thank you, James Fraser. It has been a very great honour to know you,” his friend said as Jamie was called forward for his examination.

He never laid eyes on Joe Abernathy again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anziehen! - Get dressed!  
> Kommen Sie hier! - Come here!  
> Marschieren! - March!


	11. Chapter 10

December 15, 1945, Lallybroch, Scotland

The months flew by. Claire continued to excel in her medical studies, and Brianna throve at the rectory. Two of Mrs. Graham’s new boarders had young children of a similar age, and Claire often opened the front door at the end of a long day to the squeals and prattle of a small mob of toddlers who had taken over the front parlor.

Precocious and chatty, Bree delighted in telling anyone who would listen that her “Mama s’gonna be a doctor an’ den my Da will come home”. People assumed the child was referring to Frank, who spent most of his time at Oxford preparing his doctoral thesis on the aftermath of Culloden, and Claire let them. There was a twisted symmetry to the fact that one of her husbands was researching the retaliation against the Jacobites after their crushing defeat, while the other was living through it.

The end of the war heralded a time of unfettered celebration, and Claire celebrated alongside the joyful crowd. She was happy the hostility was over – how could she not be? – plus it meant that Jamie was not at risk of being immediately conscripted after he came back through the stones. She was certain there would be some price to pay for his truancy, but they would figure it out, together. Just as they would navigate the delicate operation required to secure her divorce from Frank, without giving up their ties to Lallybroch. 

As the Christmas holidays approached, Claire worked twice as hard to complete her practicums before her self-imposed deadline. Once Jamie was back, she doubted she would be returning to Edinburgh. He didn’t like the big city, and she imagined them settling down somewhere in the Highlands where she could practice medicine and her Scot could work the land.

The bus ride to Inverness was endless and dreary. Bree was inconsolable to be leaving Mrs. Graham and the cozy familiarity of the rectory. Claire could have cried herself upon leaving the station to find Murtagh standing on the pavement, his familiar tweed cap held between his hands.

“G’d evenin’ tae ye, Mistress,” the overseer greeted as he took her large bag and lifted it into the parked Vauxhall’s tiny boot. “An’ tae ye, wee lady,” he added, bending down to greet his goddaughter, who clutched at her mother’s skirt. “Ye’re near twice the size as the last time I saw ye, _mo nighean_. Have ye eaten up all the sweeties in Edin’bra, then?” From inside his pocket, Murtagh produced a small boiled sweet and handed it to Brianna, who had to let go of her mother to accept it.

“What do you say to Mr. Fitzgibbons, Bree?” Claire prompted.

“ _Tapadh leat_ , Mr. Fitz,” Brianna replied, smiling around the hard candy as she popped it into her mouth. Murtagh beamed.

Claire climbed into the antiquated vehicle, holding Bree tightly on her lap. Murtagh began the long drive to Lallybroch. At least the Blackout was over, so they could use their headlights once again.

“How are things on the estate?” she asked, after they’d passed the outskirts of Inverness. “Have most of the tenants who were serving returned home?”

Despite being over for six months, the war cast a long shadow over Great Britain. Petrol and many foodstuffs were still rationed. Soldiers who had served in Europe were redeployed to the Pacific theatre or were involved in various reconstruction activities on the continent prior to being demobilized. This would prove beneficial, Claire rationalized, because no-one would question why Jamie had not yet returned from the front. To the extent that she had a plan, Claire wanted Jamie to blend back into modern life as unobtrusively as possible. The less he had to say about his time away, the better.

“Aye,” Murtagh replied cautiously, peering at her out of the corner of his eye. “I s’ppose Master Fraser hasna been demobbed yet. But he’ll back tae Scotland soon, lass. Have ye…” Here Murtagh glanced at Brianna, who was a heavy warmth against her chest, fast asleep. “Have ye given any thought tae what ye’ll do, when he comes home?”

A watery laugh escaped her throat. “I’ve thought of little else. I suppose I should tell you; I’ll be leaving Frank. I know that he’s your laird, and the son of your good friend, so I won’t ask for your approval, but…”

“Ye dinna need my approval, lass, but ye ‘ave it all the same. Anyone who ‘as eyes tae see ye and young Jamie t’gether canna question the rightness of it. We dinna choose who we love.”

This struck her as a highly romantic sentiment from the usually prosaic overseer. She wondered for the first time who he had loved, when he didn’t have a choice.

The final miles of their journey were passed in silence, each lost within thoughts that were too painful and secret to be given voice.

***

Frank traveled up from Oxford, and they went through the motions of preparing for a quiet family holiday celebration. Claire did it for Brianna’s sake, not wanting the estrangement between her parents to affect the young girl’s enjoyment of Christmas. 

As the days before Jamie’s scheduled return ran short, Claire grew increasingly distracted and flighty. She forgot to tighten the screws around the base of the enormous fir tree Frank erected in the great room, and the whole thing came crashing to the floor when she tried to hang ornaments in the upper boughs. Then she forgot the shortbread in the oven while daydreaming about a return to intimacy with Jamie after two years apart. The cookies burned while her mind conjured the intense heat of their reunion. Frank made several cross comments about her featherbrained behaviour, but not even his trenchant tone could make a dent in her happiness. Jamie was coming home!

***

Christmas Eve dawned to a heavy rain soaking the hard-packed ground of the courtyard. Inside, Lallybroch smelled of evergreen, spices, and Cook’s roast duck. Every room was aglow with electric lights. Frank had unearthed an old phonograph on which he was playing his favourite Glenn Miller records. Tipsy on four glasses of claret, Claire allowed herself to be spun across the floor of the great room, laughing as Frank lowered her into an elaborate dip, her new dress twirling about her thighs.

Frank leaned forward, staring at her painted lips. Flushed and jittery, Claire ducked under his arm, claiming it was time to tuck Brianna into bed. She’d dressed up for Jamie’s homecoming, forgetting that her other husband might misread her intentions. The sooner she could end the farce that was their marriage, the better.

Once Brianna was asleep, Claire suggested she might want to attend midnight mass in the village church. She was counting on Frank’s general disdain for organized religion to prevent him from joining her, and he didn’t disappoint.

“Take the Vauxhall, darling. It’s raining cats and dogs out there.” She kissed him lightly on his smooth cheek and hastened to the courtyard before any further catastrophe could intervene. She didn’t feel guilty at her treatment of Frank, per se. It was as Murtagh said, one couldn’t help who one loved. But she did feel pity for her first husband. He certainly didn’t ask to be her second choice.

Claire was so nervous it took four tries to insert the key and force the old engine to turn over. She looked back at the main house, its windows throwing orange patterns into the night. After tonight, it would no longer be her true home, and she felt a pang of regret at the loss. Jamie was her home now. Wherever he was, that was where she belonged.

She forced herself to drive the dark road to Craig na Dunn slowly, despite her eagerness to arrive. The cascading rain caused her to peer myopically through the windscreen, only slightly lessened by flicks of the manual wipers. 

Finally, after what felt like hours, she spotted the lane where she’d parted from Jamie over two years before. She half expected to see his tall form standing in the twin beams cast by the headlights, his curls darkened by the rain to the colour of clotted blood. He wasn’t there, and she chastised herself for the adolescent notion. Not even bothering to grab her umbrella, she ran, stumbling every few steps on the slick grass, to the top of the hill.

The tall stones loomed over the summit like angry sentinels, darkest grey against the obscurity of the sky.

“Jamie,” she cried out, walking around the outer circle and peering next to each stone. “Jamie, it’s me. It’s Claire.” Only the wind answered, whistling through the bare branches of nearby trees.

“Jamie!” she tried again. Nothing.

Rationalizing that time travel was nothing if not an inexact science, she pulled her coat tight around her shoulders and settled near the base of the largest stone, being careful not to touch it. She might have been imagining things, but she thought she detected a faint hum emanating from its cold surface.

He would come. She knew it. She felt it in the very marrow of her being. Jamie was out there, and he was trying to get back to her. She’d waited two years; she could wait another hour in the rain.

One hour turned to two and then three. The rain lessened and eventually stopped. Claire shivered miserably in her soaking wet clothes. Her teeth began to chatter. Finally her chin dropped to her chest, and tears christened her cheeks.

An owl hooted in a nearby tree, startling her awake. Dawn had begun to lighten the sky. Claire looked around the stone circle in a panic, but there was still no sign of Jamie. Brushing the dirt from her skirt and hands, she mentally squared her shoulders.

Jamie wasn’t coming. The only explanation she could countenance was that something was preventing him from travelling back through the Stones. She was just going to have to travel back through time and bring him home herself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> mo nighean - my girl  
> Tapadh leat - Thank you


	12. Chapter 11

December 2, 1945, Louisville, Kentucky

He hadn’t expected America to be so damnably cold. Joe had only mentioned the oily, slick heat of a southern summer in his many tales, an exotic notion to a Highlander such as himself. Jamie’s one threadbare civilian outfit was doing nothing to cut the wind as he slogged down Logan Street. Snow collected inside his loafers to add to his discomfort.

The Hopkins family resided at 810 Logan, a one-story brick home with an elaborately carved lintel presiding over a weathered stoop that had a distinct list to starboard. Jamie could commiserate, having only recently regained the ability to walk down the street without the unsettling feeling of the pavement rising and lowering beneath his feet. The Atlantic crossing on the Queen Mary, while expedient and undoubtedly luxurious, hadn’t improved his opinion of sea travel, nor his wame’s reaction to it.

A dark-skinned girl with pigtails crowning her head like tiny antlers answered the door. She stared at him so long, he began to wonder if something was amiss with his appearance and ran a hand through the tufts of his reborn curls. The little girl’s lip quivered. She might burst into tears if he didn’t establish his cause for knocking in due haste.

“Halo. My name is James Fraser and I’m…”

“GRAN-MAAAAAAAAAA!!” the girl yelled, fleeing into the comfortably appointed parlour. The winter’s bite invaded the house around his hunched shoulders. He considered if perhaps he hadn’t made a terrible mistake. There was nothing for it, though. He was already here, and he had an oath to fulfill.

“Can I help you?” A matronly woman with close-cropped steel-grey curls and skin the colour of treacle appraised him cautiously.

“Aye, I’m hoping ye can. My name is James Fraser, ma’am. Lieutenant James Fraser, formerly of the British Army. During the war, I was held prison’r wi’ an American soldier named Joe Abernathy, who I believe ye knew. I’m here tae deliver a message from him, to a Miss Gail Hawkins.”

He wouldn’t have thought it possible, but the woman paled visibly. He stepped forward, worried he was going to have to catch her if she fainted. She was made of sterner stuff, however, and recovered her poise in an instant. Stepping aside, she beckoned him enter with a flick of her hand.

It was many hours before Jamie stepped back onto the unlit street. Despite the emotional toll of telling and retelling the story of his brief friendship with Joe, he felt a weight had been lifted from his shoulders that had sat there since he first awoke in a British field hospital, one of the fortunate survivors of the Dachau concentration camp.

He’d been treated as a hero: promoted to lieutenant and showered with medals for his role in resisting the Germans prior to and during his imprisonment. Lieutenant Colonel Tryon himself had pinned the Victoria Cross to Jamie’s lapel while the younger man struggled to sit upright in his hospital cot, a borrowed uniform hanging like sack cloth from his gaunt frame. He wished he could explain that survival was not heroism. That there was no nobility in suffering, only the shackles that tied one to it. He was still a prisoner, and his captors were the ghosts of every man, woman and child who had died in the senseless lottery of inhumanity. There in the cramped parlour of the Hopkins family home, he felt himself for the first time in the company of others who might understand how that felt.

Gail was a soft-spoken woman of about twenty with the sparkle of wry wit in her brown eyes. She would have made Joe an excellent wife, in a more decent world. Saying their goodbyes in the halo of light thrown by the front window, he had pressed a heavy medal with its crimson ribbon into her palm.

“I dinna ken if it ‘elps at all, but this belongs tae Joe. Twas given tae me for valour in the face of the enemy, but I ne’er met a more courageous man than he. I lived because he marched towards his death sae bravely.” 

Gail didn’t speak; couldn’t. But she grasped his Victoria Cross like a lifeline, and he prayed that it might help her bury Joe in her heart, as his friend had requested all those months before.

**

“What do ye mean, the sailing’s been cancelled?” It was December 15th, and Jamie could think of nothing but going home to Lallybroch and holding his wife and daughter close to his chest until they merged into a single being.

“De propeller, he is broke, sir. Queen Mary no go England ‘til after Creest-mas.”

Despite the ticket agent’s broken English, the implications were clear. He would not be travelling back to Lallybroch until the New Year, meaning that his wife would wait at the Stones for him in vain. After everything he’d seen and done, it was the image of Claire standing on that hill, believing him to have abandoned her for the past, that nearly did him in.

Walking back to the cheap rooming house, he found himself wishing that they had installed an infernal telephone prior to his departure. Then, the idea of a telegram sprang to mind.

He racked his mind, trying to think of words that would dull Claire’s shock at finding her husband very much alive in present-day New York City, rather than in Scotland two hundred years in the past. He had always planned on confessing his deception to his wife, but had been counting on doing so in person, where her ire would hopefully be tempered by his physical presence.

In a moment of inspiration, he wrote to Murtagh instead.


	13. Chapter 12

December 31, 1945, Lallybroch, Scotland

It was the second hardest decision she’d ever made, but she wouldn’t be taking Brianna with her through the Stones. Eighteenth century Scotland was no place for a toddler, and she had no way of knowing what effect travelling through the Stones might have on her health. Jamie had arrived half-dead, but it wasn’t apparent whether the trip through the Stones contributed to his ill health, or merely acted as a portal from a place of certain death to one where she might save his life.

She rationalized that she’d only be gone for a short time, and while Brianna was old enough to notice her absence, she would forget soon enough once she and Jamie returned.

There was no version of future events that ended without Jamie’s safe return home.

She didn’t have long to gather supplies. She at least had the experience of preparing for Jamie’s return to the past under her belt. There was no question of her passing as a Scot, so she concocted a story of an English gentlewoman separated from her party when waylaid by brigands. With that explanation in mind, she bought yards of blue calico with which to fashion a dress and purchased the most old-fashioned wool overcoat she could find in the thrift shops, along with stockings and sturdy heeled shoes. Into an oversized cloth market bag, she stuffed extra cotton underwear, wool socks and a wool shawl, several days’ supply of oatcakes pilfered from Cook’s cabinets and a selection of stoppered glass bottles containing those salves and ointments she felt certain would not attract attention. A leather pocket purse would hang around her neck to be tucked beneath her bodice, containing a collection of old coins similar to the ones Jamie purchased in Aviemore before his departure.

The eve of Hogmanay dawned clear and cold. Frank had invited the tenants to the main house to celebrate the dawning of a new year, and it was easy to slip away unnoticed. Knowing her strength, or lack thereof, she waited until Brianna was asleep to bid her goodbye. Her daughter’s brown curls lay across her warm forehead as Claire bent to kiss her sweet-smelling skin.

“Be good for Laogharie and Mrs. Crook, my baby girl. I’ll be back before you know it, with your Da,” she whispered through her tears.

She wished she could speak to Murtagh, but he had left for the Isle of Lewis soon after bringing her home from Inverness. Sneaking out through the kitchen door, she darted through the stable-yard and slipped a thick envelope beneath the door of his croft. He alone would know the truth of her disappearance. She trusted him to use his judgement regarding what to reveal to Brianna, if for any reason she didn’t return. He was her daughter’s godfather, and she could think of no-one more worthy to watch over her while she was away.

The Vauxhall made a tremendous racket as it started. She watched the front door with her heart lodged in her throat, half-expecting Frank to rush into the courtyard and demand to know where she was going so close to midnight. Fortunately, the noise from the party muffled her escape and she was soon speeding northward, the road lit by beams of silver moonlight.

She abandoned the car in the lane, where it would certainly be noticed and identified as belonging to the Laird of Lallybroch. The wind rose as she climbed Craig na Dunn, stirring dead leaves underfoot into tiny tempests. A strange hum rose from the ground beneath her feet, much stronger than the week before. She recalled Jamie’s description of his passage through the Stones accompanied by a noise like a giant hive of bees. That’s exactly what it sounded like. She grew breathless with a potent mixture of exhilaration and terror.

The massive centre stone glowed like a weathered bone in the moonlight, some ancient oracle from a time beyond memory. Almost without realizing it, she answered its call, walking forward with her hands outstretched. The hum now shook the very air around her, vibrating every cell in her body. There was a sensation of icy chill as she made contact with something firm, and then a vertiginous tilting, like spinning out of orbit into the blankness of space. 

An image of Jamie filled her mind’s eye as she plummeted through time. His lovely curls were cropped short. He was wearing an unfamiliar dress shirt, seated on a narrow bed and staring forlornly at a black telephone. Just as she lost consciousness, the Jamie in her vision bolted upright and called out her name.


	14. Chapter 13

January 2, 1946, Southampton, England

It had been the hardest two weeks of his life, and his twenty-six years of existence included time spent in a Nazi concentration camp, marching the length of Britain with the Bonnie Prince, and recovering from a near-deadly flogging after literally falling through time. His frame of reference for extended suffering was therefore sufficiently broad, by his estimation. So when he walked, rubber-legged, down the gangway of the Queen Mary and saw Major John Grey standing next to a luxurious town car, he nearly collapsed to his knees in relief.

“You look like hell, Fraser,” his former commander remarked once they had shaken hands.

“If I ne’er set foot on another boat for the rest of my days, it will be a blessed relief, Major,” he replied, pulling his collar up against the briny wind. He’d regained much of the weight he’d lost while imprisoned, but he still tired and chilled easily. It was yet another reason he was eager to return to Lallybroch, where he was certain Claire would doctor him back to health in her indomitable way.

“Probably a good thing I didn’t foist you off on the Navy, then. And it’s no longer Major Grey, Fraser. Just plain John will do. Or Lord John, if you want to be formal.”

“Then I am just plain James. I was sorry tae hear of yer father’s passing. John.”

The last time Jamie and John Grey had met, the Scot had been a withered husk, still suffering from nightmares of his torture at the hands of the Germans that spilled over into his waking hours. John sat by his bedside for hours, reading aloud from a Thackeray novel on loan from another officer. Ounce by ounce, life slowly dripped back through his veins, accompanied by the sound of John Grey’s precise elocution.

John asked “Did you accomplish what you set out to do? In America?”

Thinking of Joe, and the emotional evening he had spent with the Hawkins family, laying that particular ghost to rest, Jamie smiled sadly.

“Aye. Aye, I did. Now I’m at liberty tae go home.”

“Then get in,” Lord John beckoned. “It’s a long drive, and I’ve been tasked with bringing you there with all dispatch.” 

The liveried driver appeared as though summoned and stowed his luggage in the boot. Perplexed, Jamie settled into the wide back seat next to his friend.

“Wha’ dae ye mean, ye’ve been tasked?”

The story that emerged made his wame twist as though he were still at sea. Lord John had received a telegram at his estate the previous day, forwarded by someone in British Army HQ. A man by the name of Murtagh Fitzgibbons was urgently seeking one Private James Fraser, formerly of His Majesty’s Black Watch. A hasty telephone call made it clear that Mr. Fitzgibbons was the next of kin from Jamie’s almost-forgotten personnel file. What John Grey couldn’t understand was how the man had no knowledge of Jamie’s capture or eventual release. The SOE was typically diligent at keeping the families of its agents informed of their status, as long as the knowledge did not compromise national security.

Shaking his head, Lord John continued to explain that Murtagh was happy (in as much as could be deduced from his growls and grunts) to learn of Jamie’s convalescence, but that he was truly calling on behalf of Private Fraser’s wife, who desperately needed him back in Scotland.

“My wife?” Jamie confirmed, thunderstruck. “Ye’re sure Murtagh mentioned my wife?”

“Given that you never told me you were married, it was a rather noteworthy detail,” John replied sarcastically.

“Tell me exactly what he said, man!”

“Well, Mr. Fitzgibbons is a man of carefully chosen words, as I’m sure you’re aware. He inquired as to your whereabouts. He seemed to know that you’d traveled to America, but not the purpose of your voyage. He thought you might be there on army business. I explained that I’d signed your discharge papers myself in October, but that you’d voyaged to America to attend to some personal matters, and that you were expected to return with the Queen Mary when she sailed from New York. At that point he broke into what I can only assume was Gaelic cursing, then bade, nay, ordered me to see that you were brought home to a place called Lallybroch with all due haste. He said, ‘tell the eejit that his hard-headed wife has gone looking for him, and that he’d best hie home and clean up the right mess he’s made of everything’. Does that make any sense to you, Fraser?”

Jamie’s head was between his knees, his hands clasped over his nape like he expected to be carpet-bombed. He concentrated on taking long whistling breaths through his nose, so as not to spill his guts all over the pristine upholstery of Lord John’s backseat.

“Fraser?” the Englishman's voice intruded.

“Aye. Aye, it makes perfect sense.”

“So… you’ve a wife, then.” John stated, still trying to process this unforeseen news and the resulting reaction.

Yes, he had a wife. And she was the bravest, most impetuous woman who had ever lived, in this century or his own. Now he only had to find her, before those qualities got her killed. Or worse.


	15. Chapter 14

January 1, 1749, Highlands, Scotland

Her first impression of the eighteenth century was that it was bitterly cold. Claire came awake lying on a bed of twigs and leaves stiffened by frost, the massive menhir blocking the weak morning sunlight with its long shadow. She felt light-headed and woozy after her trip through the Stones, but knew she had to move quickly if she was to make it to the village before full darkness. Tapping her sternum to make certain her pocket of treasure was still there, she rose and carefully descended the hill, heading south.

There was no longer a road to follow, although a rutted wagon track skirted the base of the hill. The features of the landscape were familiar enough that she could navigate with relative ease, however. The greatest difference was the presence of mighty trees on the slopes of the looming hills. The Highlands she knew were a land of rock, heather, gorse and grass so green it stung your eyes.

Claire didn’t pass another soul, although fresh manure along the path bore witness to its recent use. The watery winter sunset was a distant memory by the time she entered the principal lane of the village adjoining the estate of Lallybroch. The only lane of the village, as it turned out. Even separated by nearly two hundred years, she recognized some of the structures. The main difference was the absence of electricity. With the sun long gone, most households seemed abed. The wavering glow of candlelight shone through a few parchment windows. The pungent haze of peat smoke held close to the ground bore evidence to the fact that most fires had already been banked in preparation for the long Scottish night.

One place promised shelter no matter the hour. It was there that Claire directed her aching feet. The church and its adjacent priory looked exactly as they did when Claire had attended midnight mass on Christmas Eve one week ago, or two hundred years in the future, depending on how one cared to measure time.

Instead of a frocked priest or tonsured friar, the man who answered her persistent knocking was a deacon with the suspiciously Catholic name of Ignatius Bain. He was a dour middle-aged man whose dropsy and florid cheeks suggested a particular fondness for alcohol. After hearing Claire’s story of misfortune while travelling to Inverness, he expelled a put-upon sigh and offered her a meagre supper and flea-infested blanket. Not wanting to wear away the thin veneer of his hospitality, she thanked him profusely and retired to the church where she fell into an exhausted slumber on the hard surface of the Fraser family pew.

The next day, Claire explored the village. The residents went about the daily business of keeping alive but watched her with wary eyes. Culloden was three years past, and almost every household would have lost a father, brother, or husband to the English during the Rising. Now they lived under the oppressive weight of government reprisals aimed directly at their way of life. In their view, she was an agent of that same system, only slightly less suspect for being a woman in distress. She racked her brains for a way to locate Jamie without arousing suspicion.

After a frustrating day pretending to wait for news of her fictitious travel companions, she found she was unable to spend another evening without some sense of how difficult finding Jamie might prove to be. She couldn’t ask for him by name, obviously. He was a known traitor to the British Crown and Lallybroch was already in the hands of Frank’s distant ancestor by 1749. Not to mention there was no way Jamie would be using his own name, and she had no idea what disguise he might have adopted. But once he returned to his own time, she had little doubt that Jamie’s first priority would have been locating his family; his sister and brother-in-law and their children. 

Perhaps the secret lay not in convincing the local populace that she was not an enemy of the Jacobites, but in convincing their new English landlord that she was.

“Is Captain Randall in residence at Lallybroch, Father? I’d would dearly love to pay my respects tomorrow, and to call attention to your gracious hospitality.”

Bloodshot eyes observed her with barely concealed suspicion.

“How did you come to know Captain Randall?”

“Oh, I do not. But as I mentioned, my party’s carriage was waylaid by a group of brigands who professed themselves loyal to the would-be usurper, Charles Stuart. They leveled a great deal of vitriol at Captain Randall, who I gather was instrumental in crushing the Rising in these parts. I would dearly like to meet such a patriot,” she bluffed.

Something shifted behind the curate’s eyes, but the puffy mask of his visage never altered.

“I do not concern myself with the comings and goings of our laird, and neither should you. Goodnight, Madam Beauchamp.”

***

Claire woke as daylight was just beginning to light the clerestory windows. A slim, familiar silhouette stood near the pulpit.

“Frank?” she breathed; still half-certain she was dreaming.

“Nay, Madam. Jonathan Wolverton Randall, Lord Broch Tuarach, at your service.” The stranger made a sweeping bow, and she noticed the ivory-handled pistol tucked into his belt and the ornate sword held in a scabbard at his hip. No-one came armed to a social call in a church, even in eighteenth century Scotland. The hair on the back of her neck prickled.

“And who do I have the honour of addressing?” Frank’s ancestor inquired. Now that she was wakening, she could detect certain differences in appearance and tone, but the likeness was downright eerie.

“My name is Claire Elizabeth Beauchamp,” she replied. “I was travelling from Oxford to Inverness with my husband, Quentin Beauchamp, when our carriage was waylaid by brigands. I managed to escape, and your deacon, Father Bain, has been kind enough to provide me shelter while I await news of my companions.”

“What a harrowing tale, Madam Beauchamp. How fortunate that you were able to elude capture, recover your valuables, and walk twelve miles from the carriage road to my estate without further harassment. You are quite a remarkable heroine.” The man’s sharp eyes had missed nothing, and Claire began to panic.

“I….”

“Beauchamp. That’s French, I believe. Tell me, how much gold did the Stuart pretender promise you before he sent you into the belly of the beast?” Whereas before Randall’s demeanour had been courtly, he now towered over her seated form, menacing as a thunder cloud.

“I am not a spy!” she cried. “I am merely a waylaid traveler hoping to secure safe passage to Inverness where, God willing, I will rejoin my husband.”

“You do not wear a ring, Madam. Father Bain mentioned that you were asking in the village after Janet Murray. The Murrays, as you are doubtless aware, are fugitives from the British Crown, accused of harboring Jacobite traitors. They fled this estate three years ago. I doubt very much that they would have crossed paths with an English traveler such as you claim to be. Your story lacks greatly in what is generally known as credible detail, Mrs. Beauchamp.”

Grabbing her by the shoulder, Jonathan Randall pulled her against his lean body with surprising strength.

“Get your hands off me, you fucking bastard!” Claire twisted in his iron grip, trying to break free.

“The mask slips, I see,” her captor stated ironically. “Who are you, beneath the disguise, I wonder? A whore pretending to be a spy? Or a lady pretending to be a whore? I suppose there’s only one way to find out.”

Stumbling out into the chill morning air, Claire quickly found her wrists bound with coarse rope. Mounting his horse, Randall looked down at her with contempt. 

“I’m afraid I haven’t a horse for you. It is fortunate, therefore, that you enjoy a good walk.”

Spurring his mount, they began the long climb from the village to Lallybroch. As she was dragged behind Captain Randall, Claire realized with icy certainty that she had made a horrible mistake when she assumed her status as an English lady would protect her. And that there was no-one within two hundred years who knew of her whereabouts so they could come and rescue her from it.


	16. Chapter 15

January 3, 1946, Lallybroch, Scotland

Even taking full advantage of Lord Grey’s credentials and a near-tireless driver, it still took twenty-four hours to drive the length of Great Britain. Jamie used the time to conjure up every imaginable adversity or injury that Claire might be facing in the eighteenth century. The effort did nothing to soothe his usual motion-sickness.

It was late evening before their car pulled into the courtyard at Lallybroch. Jamie wasted no time in pounding on the door of Murtagh’s croft. If the old man was startled at his bedraggled appearance, still two stone underweight and wearing clothes borrowed from the significantly shorter Lord John, he gave no indication.

“About time ye arrived,” Murtagh growled.

“Tell me everything, _a ghoistidh_. When did she leave? Did she take Brianna wi’ her?”

Lord John listened with perplexity to the animated conversation in Gaelic that followed. At one point the older man gestured to the lit manor house across the courtyard and said something that had Jamie sinking slowly to his knees as though his bones had melted. John leapt to grab one arm and Murtagh the other, and together they half-dragged the young man into the croft and sat him on the couch.

Murtagh poured a generous amount of whisky into a glass.

“Here, lad. Drink this.” Jamie silently obeyed, still looking like he’d seen a ghost, his lips forming words that bore no sound.

Lord John pulled Murtagh towards the far side of the room.

“What in the devil did you say to him?” he hissed.

Murtagh appraised this unknown man. He was Jamie’s former superior and kind enough to drive him over five hundred miles at the request of a stranger, but he had no idea whether Lord John could be trusted with even a sliver of the truth.

“How weel do ye ken the lad?” he began cautiously.

“I know he’s one of the most honourable men to ever serve the British Army. That he single-handedly influenced the outcome of the war by destroying German positions behind enemy lines before he was caught, tortured and left to rot in a labour camp for twelve months. That it took him three months to regain the strength to walk, but once he could stand the first thing he asked for was passage to America in order to fulfill a promise to an American POW who wasn’t as lucky. And now I suppose I know that he’s married, although your telegram was the first mention I’d heard of any living family at all.”

Murtagh absorbed this information in silence, then seemed to come to a decision.

“Aye, ye ken the lad weel enough then. What ye dinna ken is that he was laird of this estate when he went off tae fight in the war, marrit tae the widow of the previous laird. He didna want her tae fret o’er losing another ‘usband in battle, so he let her believe he’d hidden himself away ‘til the fighting was o’er.”

Here Lord John scoffed, and Murtagh smiled. “Aye, I ken. But love makes us believe incredible things, does it no’? All the same, Mistress Fraser was waiting on our lad tae return when her first ‘usband showed up instead.”

“Not dead?” Lord John asked, captivated by the strange tale, seemingly stolen from the pages of some Teutonic fable.

“Verra much alive. And now the mistress has gone away tae search abroad for her ‘usband while our wee Jamie was actually in America.”

“But her first husband is still alive!”

Murtagh wondered if Lord John had ever been in love. “There’s they that ye are marrit tae on paper, milord, and they that ye are marrit tae in yer heart. If ye’d e’er seen them t’gether, ye’d ken our lad an’ his lady for the latter kind.”

Jamie roused from where he’d been sitting staring into the fire, having heard Murtagh’s last statement.

“ _A ghoistidh_ , will ye watch over Bree for me while I go after Claire?”

“Aye, lad. Ye ken I will. Captain Randall has brought in a governess. She misses her Mam, but I’ll see her well, I promise ye.”

“Wait, Captain Frank Randall?” Lord John interrupted. “Frank Wolverton Randall?”

“Aye, thas’ ‘im. Do ye know him, John?” Jamie asked, momentarily distracted from planning his flight to the Stones.

“By reputation only. He was one of Tryon’s men behind enemy lines at the beginning of the war. Some say he ran the British arm of the French Resistance for a time, going by the codename The Wolf. Something happened and he was released by the Germans in some top-secret prisoner swap organized by Tryon himself. What an extraordinary co-incidence that you both worked for the SOE!”

Jamie had suffered so many emotional blows in the previous forty-eight hours, this one hardly left a scratch, at least on the surface. Murtagh watched him with a worried expression as his eyes took on an icy ferocity he’d never witnessed before.

“Are ye alright, _mo ghille_?”

Jamie nodded curtly, although he didn’t dare speak. He saw with utter clarity that General Tryon had sold him to the Germans in exchange for Captain Randall’s release. Probably Annalise and others as well. Annalise with the haunted eyes who was executed before his very eyes because she wanted her country to be free. The numbness that had blanketed his soul since his capture started to drain away, and in its place was pure, elemental rage. It took everything he had not to march into the main house and shoot Frank Wolverton Randall directly between the eyes. There was only one thing stopping him.

Randall had taken Lallybroch. Randall had taken Brianna. Randall had months breathing the sweet air of freedom while Jamie prayed every day for the strength to resist the siren call of death. He’d be damned if he’d take Claire away from him as well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a ghoistidh - godfather  
> mo ghille - my boy


	17. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning: brief description of attempted rape

January 4, 1749, Lallybroch, Scotland

She would have spat in Jonathan Randall’s face, had her mouth not been dry as bone. His interrogation technique was a brutal combination of condescending questions, threats of physical violence and leaving her locked in the north-east bedroom at Lallybroch without food or water. She was made of sturdy stuff, but she could feel herself start to waver.

The problem was that there was no truth she could reveal to Randall that would not sound like a preposterous falsehood. She was the English wife of a Jacobite traitor and she had borne Randall’s many-times great granddaughter. Her purpose was to find a man who did not mean to be found by locating his family whom she had never met. She had travelled two hundred years into the past to recover her one true love.

Credible lies were equally vexing. She had a rudimentary knowledge of Scottish history after Culloden, but not nearly enough to outwit Randall. Her best hope was to delay, in the hopes of seizing an opportunity to escape.

The grating sound of metal on metal announced the release of the padlock and unbarring of the door. Instead of Randall, a middle-aged woman in a plain dress, a dirty apron and kerchief entered, carrying a wooden tray.

“The Capt’n bade me serve ye supper, mistress,” the servant pronounced in broad Scots.

Claire fell upon the meal with the ferocity of a pack of jackals. A small urn contained fresh water that she drank too quickly, causing a spate of coughing.

“Easy, lass. It willna disappear,” the servant cautioned.

Claire nodded, and took a modest bite from a fresh oatcake sweetened with honey, exactly how Jamie had once attempted to show her how to make them. With dawning realization, Claire turned to the woman who was watching her with veiled pity, obviously ill at ease with her role as jailer to an English lady.

“Are you… Mrs. Crook, by any chance?” Claire asked.

The woman jolted and took a step backwards. Claire hastened to explain.

“I know… knew your master, James Fraser. And his sister, Jenny,” she added for good measure, lest the woman think she was a trollop Jamie had met in his travels. “I came here looking for them but was captured by Captain Randall instead. Please, you must help me!”

“I canna do that, mistress,” the woman whispered, clearly terrified.

“If you could just give them a message for me. Please! Tell them Claire Beauchamp is being held against her will at Lallybroch. Tell them….” she struggled for some memory that would confirm she was who she said. “Tell them I understand now why Jamie ate all your oatcakes. That they are so delicious, they are worth a good thrashing.”

The woman crossed herself, lifted her skirts and hurried from the room. The sound of the key in the padlock sent Claire to the floor in despair. Now that her thirst was slaked, she had tears to spare.

***

“I’m tiring of these games, Madam. You say you’re from Oxfordshire but cannot name the bishop. You were traveling to Inverness, but do not know the name of the inn to which you were destined. If you are a spy, you are a very bad one. Myself, I think you’re nothing more than a conniving wench, preying upon the sympathies of your fellow Englishmen. If that is so, I see no reason why I do not sample your wares in exchange for the food and lodging you have gained from me.”

Captain Randall had returned to Lallybroch in a foul temper and had been questioning Claire for the past hour, lubricated by a large flagon of ale. The fire blazed in the hearth and his forehead was shiny with sweat, but he shuddered as though cold. Her medical eye wondered if he might not be ill. A quick glance at his palm confirmed her suspicions. A telltale rash spoke of a secondary case of syphilis.

Staggering upright, Randall began to unlace his breeches. Claire’s eyes darted around the room for a weapon, anything she could use to ward off the impending attack. Darting around his clumsy body, she grabbed for the iron poker laying next to the chimney. Her first swing missed and a heavy candelabra crashed to the ground.

“The greater your resistance, the more I shall enjoy myself. By all means, do your worst you filthy whore,” her assailant slurred.

Her next blow made contact with his upper arm and he swore angrily before grabbing the iron rod and lifting it over her head. Their bodies rubbed together, and she could feel his excitement against her belly. Swiftly, she kneed him in the groin and he dropped like a stone. The door was only ten feet away, but her legs weren’t fast enough. Her attacker threw her to the ground. She fought, thrashing and screaming. It wasn’t going to be enough. He was mercilessly strong. Everywhere they touched, his skin burned with a raging fever.

“I’ll thank ye to take yer hands off my wife.”

It must be a hallucination brought on by her panic, Claire thought. A trick of the mind, conjuring Jamie’s voice when she most needed him. But Randall ceased his attack and turned towards the window, which was now open to the night air. Kneeling on the pane and brandishing Murtagh’s family sword was her husband.

“Jamie…” she whispered, overcome.

Not taking his eyes from his enemy, Jamie tilted his head. “Come o’er here, Claire.”

Recovering from his initial shock, Randall choked out a disbelieving noise.

“I vastly underestimated you, Madam Beauchamp. Or is it Fraser? Or possibly Malcolm? Not for a second would I have believed that you were married to the famous vanishing Jacobite. How’s your back, Fraser?”

“Very well, no thanks to you,” Jamie sneered, watching Claire’s progress towards him from the corner of his eye.

“I don’t suppose you’d be willing to show me, for old time’s sake?” Now that Jamie had arrived, Randall seemed to have completely forgotten about Claire, allowing her to come to stand beside her husband, who was still balancing in the window.

“It would be the last thing ye e’er saw,” Jamie growled. “Put yer arms about my neck, Sassenach, and hold tight,” he added under his breath.

Doing as he bade without question, Claire found herself falling through space and bracing for the crippling impact of the ground. Instead, the two of them landed side by side on the pungent but soft pile of dirty straw that was stacked next to the stables. Not taking a second to recover his breath, Jamie leapt to his feet and dragged her into that darkened building. A massive black charger stood in the doorway of the first stall, and holding its bridle was Mrs. Crook.

“Mistress Beauchamp’s wee sack is behind yer saddle, milord. An’ I added some oatcakes an’ a flask of whisky,” the old woman explained as Jamie mounted the jittering horse, pulling Claire up after him to sit between his thighs.

“Thank ye, Mrs. Crook. Truly. Dinna let Randall catch ye about the place, now.”

“Och, dinna fash, milord. God speed tae ye. And ye, milady.”

Claire barely had time to call out her thanks before they were galloping out into the stableyard and across the northern pasture, their way lit only with stars.


	18. Chapter 17

January 5, 1749, Aviemore, Scotland

Of all the places he had imagined reuniting with his wife, he never thought of a brothel. It had two distinct advantages, however: the owner was a loyal Jacobite supporter, and it was the last place Captain Randall would think to look for them.

“If it isn’t the wee cockerel,” the broad-hipped proprietress exclaimed as they entered the dimly lit establishment. “Tis an age since we’ve seen ye about these parts, milord. There were rumours ye were ded. Many’s the heart that’ll flutter tae see ye alive, an’ even more ‘andsome besides.”

“G’evening tae ye, Mistress Macfarlane. May I introduce my wife, Claire Beauchamp Fraser.”

“How do you do?” Claire spoke out of habit, her gaze flickering at and away from the lewd scenes taking place all around them.

If he hadn’t been holding onto his last nerve with the fervour of a drowning man, the change to the brothel-owner’s slack face would have caused him to smile. She looked like she just tasted sour milk.

“Yer wife? An’ a Sassenach, forebye? Och, lad, what would yer father say?”

Claire, whose nerves were doubtless similarly taxed, picked that moment to snap.

“We won’t importune you with our objectionable commerce, madam. Come, Jamie. There must be an inn nearby.”

Mistress Macfarlane’s eyes flew wide, clearly astounded at his wife’s outspokenness. She likely expected him to unleash an immediate physical correction. As it was, he merely grinned tiredly. Claire was not a biddable woman. He could yell and harangue and strut like a rutting stag, and all that would be accomplished is that she would dig her little heels in all the more firmly. Months of experience, trial, and mostly error, had taught him this when they were first married, and he had not forgotten.

The situation was different, however. Claire knew next to nothing about what it really meant to be an outlaw in eighteenth century Scotland. His plan was to send her back through the Stones, before she could find out.

“Nay, Claire. We’ll spend a night or twa here, if Mistress Macfarlane can spare us a room, some hot water, an’ a late supper.”

Somewhat to his surprise, his wife acquiesced in silence. She must be very tired indeed.

Upstairs and alone at last, he found he couldn’t stop staring at her. He had thought he’d remembered every detail, but there were new wonders to discover. The concave ellipse of her waist, so narrow now that she was no longer with child. The fragile knobs of her spine beneath the ivory parchment of her nape. Everything about her invited tenderness, and yet his palms still tingled with the banked fire of his rage. He drew a deep breath, trying to calm himself.

“Are ye alright Sassenach?” he asked curtly, coming to stand between Claire and the most captivating wall in history. “Randall, he didna hurt ye, did he?”

He’d meet his maker with the image of Claire lying beneath that monster on the floor of Lallybroch, her skirts pushed around her hips as she thrashed and screamed, burned in his mind. They’d barely spoken on the frantic night-ride to Aviemore, but she seemed… unharmed. Still, it had been four days since she traveled through the Stones. Who was to say what other hardships had befallen her in that time? 

“No,” she answered at last, glancing up at him then away. “He didn’t have time, thanks to you.”

“Thank Christ. When I met Mrs. Crook in the village and she told me that man had taken ye prisoner… God, Claire. What were ye thinkin’, coming here?”

Her chin raised in a proud gesture he was well acquainted with. He was about to be dressed down. 

“What was I thinking? I was trying to find you, Jamie! I certainly didn’t intend to be captured. Randall caught me unawares, while I was sleeping in the village kirk. When you didn’t return through the Stones at Yuletide, I knew something horrible must have happened to you. I came to find you, but I had no idea where to look.”

Her shoulders slumped, as though her inability to find him in a century he was not occupying at the time was a personal failing. Taking her chin gently in his palm, he lifted her face until he could look directly at her face. By God, she was a brave woman. The English got it right the first time. They should have sent Claire to fight the Germans.

“I missed ye, Sassenach.”

Her lips trembled, and a lone tear ran down her face.

“I was so afraid, Jamie,” she confessed, shocking him.

“Dinna be scart, Sassenach. Give me a day or twa tae plan, and I’ll see ye safely back tae the Stones.”

“You’ll see me… and just where in the hell do you think you’re going, James Fraser?”

Truth be told, he hadn’t a concrete plan, which was why he needed time to think. His first priority was ensuring Claire’s safety, and she was safest back in her own time. Outside of that, there was only a vague notion that he should try to find his family. He hadn’t intended to ever return to his time. He’d made his life with Claire and Brianna. But those certainties no longer held. Frank had returned, and the twentieth century no longer felt like a haven to him. The Nazis had seen to that.

“Oh, I see,” Claire said with a stricken look. “You no longer want to return to Lallybroch.” She paced to the shuttered window, clasping her arms around her waist. “That’s why you didn’t come through the Stones as we planned. I… well, I guess I was mistaken.”

“Nah, wait, Sassenach. Ye have it all wrong!”

“It doesn’t appear that I do. Perhaps there are… other ties, that kept you here…”

He couldn’t believe it. After everything he had done, everything that had been done to him, was she really accusing him of adultery? It would appear so. A plume of heat coursed up his neck, lighting his skin on fire.

“Are ye truly suggestin’ that I played ye false, Claire? Ye, who spent the months I was away wi’ that faithless bastard, Frank Randall? Livin’ wi’ him as his wife? Lettin’ him hold my bairn? Christ, when I think of it, I could…”

He swept his arm across the table in one violent arc, the clatter of wooden bowls and cutlery echoing in his ringing ears. He’d come within an inch of striking Claire instead, and it terrified him.

“Frank!” she yelled, equally roused. “I don’t care about Frank and I never have! You’re the one who left me, not…”

“Left ye! Ye damn near dragged me tae the Stones, woman. How long was I gone, a’fore ye let that turncoat take my place?”

In his ire, he realized he had said too much. Far more than he meant to. He wished momentarily for the ground to swallow him whole. The threads that wove his past to his present were tangled in knots. He’d hoped in vain that he’d be able to unravel one without tugging on all the others. He saw now that was impossible. His lie to Claire, his time as a soldier and prisoner, Brianna, Jenny and her family, the Nazis and Frank Randall: they would need to be sorted all at once, or not at all.

Claire froze mute, staring at his forearm with an astonished expression after he raised it to run his hands through his unbound hair. 

***

She couldn’t believe what she was seeing; couldn’t twist the picture in her mind so that it was right side up.

“What the bloody hell is that?” Her voice shook.

Jamie looked both guilty and confused.

“What are ye talkin’ about, Sassenach?”

“That. On your arm. Why do you have a tattoo?”

Instead of answering, her husband sat down heavily on the bed. The hand that ran through his close-cropped curls was shaking.

“That’s a tattoo from the German camps, Jamie. That’s a fucking brand left by the Nazis on their prisoners of war.” Claire felt something boiling up inside her, trapped deep in her throat like a geyser preparing to release. It didn’t have a name, but the strength of it terrified her.

“If ye ken what it is, Claire, I dinna see why ye need ask me,” Jamie growled, pulling the sleeves of his linen shirt down to his wrists self-consciously.

“Right,” she growled back, sitting beside him. “Start talking, lad. And don’t leave anything out.”

To his credit, Jamie did as she asked. He recounted every step along the meandering path that led him from their parting at Craig na Dunn, to Fort George, to the French Resistance, to the solitary confinement of his cell in Alsace, the long march to Dachau, the months of misery before his eventual release at the end of the war, his rehabilitation, the voyage to America to pay his debt to Joe Abernathy, and then the frantic trip back to Lallybroch and through the Stones. By the time he’d described Annalise’s execution, Claire was crying openly. His robotic recitation of the privations and indignities suffered as a Nazi prisoner crumpled her like newsprint, her arms holding her knees as she keened as though her guts were being torn out.

“Hush, Sassenach. Dinna cry. Tis over, aye? I’m here. All will be well.”

Large hands tried to pull her towards the sanctuary of his chest, but she resisted. With an inaudible snap, she was screaming and scratching, her hands ineffectually raining blows on his undefended torso. Jamie sat unmoving through her assault, and that only made her angrier. Words leapt into the air between them, hot sparks from the raging forest fire inside her chest.

“Why didn’t you listen to me, you bloody Scot? 

Could have… never meant to…

Bloody. Fucking. Nazi death camps! 

Duplicitous vainglorious bastard, IwishI’dnevermetyou.”

Finally, she ran out of fuel. Like the strings holding her together had suddenly been cut, she collapsed onto his body, his clothing damp with her tears and sweat and spit. She lay panting, emotionally exhausted. Tiny shudders occasionally shook her bones from head to feet. Very carefully, Jamie brushed his long fingers through her curls. Neither said anything for a long while.

“Did I e’er tell ye about changelings, Sassenach?” 

Too worn out to follow his train of thought, she merely shook her head, feeling sparkles of pain as the tangle of her curls caught and snagged on the buttons of his shirt.

“In these times, an’ fer as far back as anyone can recall, a babe born sickly will be left on a fairy hill fer the night by its Mam and Da. In the morn, the parents return and bury the bairn, who naturally dies wi’out food nor warmth.”

“That’s horrifying, Jamie. But I don’t…”

“Folk believe,” he continued, not allowing her to interrupt, “that the fairies take the sick babe away tae their land beyond the veil. And in its place, they leave a changeling. So tis’ no’ their own bairn the parents lay in the ground. They find a measure of peace, I reckon, imaginin’ their loved one alive in ano’er realm, rather than ded in theirs.”

Slow understanding crept in.

“And that’s what you thought you were giving me? The comfort of a delusion? I agonized over sending you through the Stones. Not a day went by when I didn’t ask myself whether I’d made a terrible mistake. And when you didn’t come back… You lied to me, Jamie! You lied. I don’t know if I can ever forgive you for that.”

Rather than plead or argue, Jamie merely lay still beneath her, breathing. He wasn’t a man to make excuses for actions that he believed were righteous. She’d long admired this resolute aspect of his character, his intractable fealty to a course he saw with utter certainty as just. Looking back on the day she made her ultimatum, the only surprising part was how long Jamie deliberated before choosing to deceive her and go to war in secret. Murtagh’s words from that day came back to her: “either choice will ransom his soul”.

The problem wasn’t really that Jamie had deceived her. The problem was that she had married a man who could never place her above his inborn code of honour. A man who was frighteningly easy to love, and impossible to manipulate. A man who was no longer her legal spouse…

Claire’s stomach clenched as she imagined Jamie’s return to Lallybroch. Not only had his wife undertaken a dangerous and unnecessary rescue mission through the Stones, but he would have suddenly been presented with the fact that their marriage had never been valid. Perhaps that was why he spoke of sending her back through the Stones alone. With Frank’s prior claim, would Jamie’s principles cause him to give up on their union entirely? The idea was so abhorrent, her heart ached.

***

“Did you… were you able to see Brianna, while you were at Lallybroch?” Claire asked, toying with the placket of his shirt in a way that made him shiver. Angry or not. Despised or not. Married or not. He had wanted this woman from the first moment he held her, and he didn’t see that changing in this lifetime.

“Nah, I didna dare enter the main house. Murtagh will watch o’er her, while ye’re gone. Does she…” he paused, looking away. The threads of his love and his duty were still hopelessly tangled. “Tell me about her, Sassenach, if you will.”

Claire was clearly still upset with him, but she wasn’t cruel. The longing he felt to recover the memories of those lost months must have shown on his face, as she titled her face to gaze at him.

“She has the most beautiful brown curls, and big brown eyes,” she began.

“ _Mo nighean donn_ ,” he sighed. “What was her first word?”

“Dog. Followed swiftly by no. I suppose it comes as no surprise that she has a mind of her own.” Claire cuddled closer to him, warming to the subject of the young girl they both loved.

“Does she… what does she call Frank?”

Claire startled at the mention of the topic that hung like mist between them, obscuring their view of one another. “Father, mostly. She doesn’t… Jamie, I don’t know what Murtagh told you, but I never dreamt that…”

“We dinna have to rush it, Claire. I ken ye didna expect Frank tae return. The lass is the man’s blood, after all. And I, weel… I wasna there. Ye did wha’ was proper. Ye ‘onoured yer marriage vows.”

“No! I mean, yes. I did honour my vows. My vows to you, Jamie. Frank is no more my true husband than he is Brianna’s true father. She calls you “Da”, Jamie. There’s a picture of you beside her little bed, and she kisses it, after she prays for your safety. She asked God every night for the war to be over, so that her Da could come home. She was… we both were, holding on so tightly for your return, and when you didn’t…” she broke off, overcome with tears.

“God, Claire. I’m sorry. I’m so verra verra sorry. I didna mean what I said before. I was sore, an’ I said more than I meant. Do ye forgive me, lass?”

“Forgiven,” she whimpered, trying to claw her way inside his chest. “I’m sorry too, Jamie. I can’t believe what you’ve been through. And then to find out about Frank and come to my rescue, God. I don’t know what I would have done. And then I hit you, and…”

“Forgiven, Claire. Mo Sorcha. My heart’s own. There is nothing you could say or do that I wouldna forgive, for I love ye.”

He grasped Claire behind her neck and brought his mouth to hers like a conquering army. The quiet seductions, the teasing forays, all his plans for this first kiss scattered on the howling gale of his gratitude, lust and guilt.

She was making those plaintive animal noises in her throat that drove him mad. With no heed for her only shift, he tore at the laces gathered across her bosom, baring an ivory shoulder and half a breast to his frenzied kisses.

“Jamie. Oh, Jamie.”

He’d never forced a woman, never even come close. But if Claire asked him to stop at that instant, he knew he wouldn’t be capable of it. Fortunately, she seemed as drugged by her need as he was, her hands ridding him of his shirt in a single move.

His cock was so hard he was afraid it might snap in two before he could enter her. Growling and panting by turns, they rolled drunkenly across the bed. Claire’s nails raked down the scarred landscape of his back, leaving trails of heat where they scratched his buttocks. He bit her shoulder in retaliation, glorying in her pained moan.

“Claire. Sassenach. Tell me ye want me. Me an’ only me,” he panted.

“Only you, Jamie. Forever. It’s always been forever for me.”

He lifted her by the waist and tossed her towards the pillows. She landed with a bounce, giggling. Seeing him kneeling over her like a victorious general, naked and proud, she allowed her knees to fall open, never once losing contact with his eyes.

His nostrils flared at the scent of her excitement, briny and sweet, the odour of her body distilled. He felt feral, unleashed, and more than a little afraid of himself.

“I dinna think I can be gentle,” he warned.

The gleam in her eye was unrepentant. “Then don’t be.”

***

His first thrust pushed the air from her lungs, a blast of heat rising from the storm inside of her. The next half dozen came in rapid succession, battering like waves on the sand. There was something dark and dangerous about their coupling, as though all the violence and pain they had suffered while apart was now being released by their joined bodies.

In their brief but intense history as lovers, she and Jamie had made love a variety of ways: reverently (as their bodies were first introduced), playfully (as they learned to be themselves, even while naked), sleepily (after Brianna was born, reconnecting in the brief hours between feedings), angrily (in the aftermath of one of their frequent disagreements).

This was the first time their coupling was truly savage. Desperate and fierce, they seemed determined to stake their claim on each other, leaving bruises and fluids behind as evidence of a passion that wouldn’t be snuffed out.

Claire spared a brief thought that it was fortunate they were lodging in a brothel, because there could be no doubt what was transpiring behind their closed door. She couldn’t have stifled her cries if she tried, and Jamie wasn’t much quieter. 

It was building to a frenzied crescendo now. Their hips clapped together. Jamie reared back and there was a faraway look on his face, as though he was lost in the labyrinth of his memories.

“Jamie,” she panted. “Look at me. I’m here. Come find me.”

Their eyes locked, and it was at that moment that the synchronized tremors of their release began. She keened, unstrung and unmade entirely.

“Claire, Claire, Claire.” Each repetition of her name accompanied a finishing stroke of his hips. Their bodies wound down and came slowly to rest, rocked by their heaving lungs and shivers of remembered glory.

They stared at each other, too stunned to speak. Eventually, their lips met in a healing kiss.

“I love ye, Sassenach,” he murmured low.

“And I love you, James Fraser. We’re going to figure this out.” And for the first time, she actually believed herself.


	19. Chapter 18

January 6, 1749, Aviemore, Scotland

A brothel offered few benefits to a weary traveler, but one was that it became quiet as a cloister in the hours near dawn. Startling awake to the unfamiliar heat of a man’s body curved along her back, Claire’s eyes darted about the room, putting the jumbled pieces of the past two weeks back in order. Even in sleep, Jamie’s arms were wrapped tightly around her waist, as though afraid she would slip away as he dreamed. Her entire body ached from their desperate lovemaking the night before.

So many things were as she remembered, yet so many things had changed. His breath near her ear whistled its usual refrain. The calloused strength of his hands, with their surprisingly elegant fingers. The bowl of his pelvis, a perfect mate for the rounded swell of her rump.

The man behind her twitched in his sleep and muttered something in a foreign tongue. Jamie was more adept at subterfuge than she was, but she sensed a weary terror beneath his surface, like an animal run to ground. She vowed silently to protect him from further harm, but she could only do that if she was at his side. There was no way she was travelling through the Stones without him.

***

He woke to the hushed, once-familiar noises of a woman going about her toilette. Whispers of ribbons and silk. The coarse winnowing of curls by boar’s bristles. Gentle raindrops falling from her chin and elbows back into the basin. He had never been a man to seek domesticity, but having it fall into his grasp like a rare pearl, he would give anything to never lose it again.

He rose, naked, and stretched, feeling his weakened muscles protest the night’s exertion.

“You’ve lost weight,” Claire remarked, watching him in the looking glass and toweling her face dry. “And your hair is much shorter.”

“Aye. And ye’re still the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.” He bent and kissed the top of her head, splashed some cold water from the basin over his face, and began to dress.

“Where are you going?” Claire asked warily.

“Out tae get news of Randall,” he answered, buckling his boots over the narrow legs of his trousers. He was pleased he remembered to pack something other than his kilt. Dressed in his plaid and travelling with an English lady, he might as well paint a target on his back.

“Won’t that be dangerous?” she asked. It was nice to have someone care about his well-being again.

“No’ if I’m careful. Dinna fash, Sassenach. There are plenty about these parts still loyal tae the Fraser clan. O’ which I am still the laird, may I remind ye. I’ll be back in an ‘our, an’ we can break our fast t’gether, aye?”

As it was, he returned in less than a quarter hour, and the news was not good. He placed a trencher of rye bread and salted ham on the table before his wife, sitting down next to her with a sigh.

“Well?” she asked, tearing off a hank of bread and stuffing it in her mouth. He wasn’t the only one who’d recently gone hungry.

“Looks like ye’re stuck wi’ me, Sassenach.”

“Really? You’re coming back through the Stones with me? Oh, Jamie, that’s wonderful!” She threw her arms around his neck in a jubilant hug.

He pushed her away gently so he could look in her eyes, so bonnie and aglow in the candlelight.

“Nah. I’m afraid tha’ isna possible right now. There are Redcoat patrols all about the countryside between Aviemore an’ Lallybroch. Randall must ‘ave sent a rider tae Fort William.”

“So, what? We stay hidden here until they go away?” Claire asked.

“Thas’ no’ possible either. Eventually, someone will tell the English where we’re hidden. There’s good money in turning in a traitor, and many are desperate.”

“I don’t understand. If we can’t go south to Craig na Dunn, and we can’t stay here, then where are we to go?”

Jamie grinned and bit into a slice of ham, chewing deliberately. Claire rolled her eyes at him in exasperation.

He finally relented. “Sassenach, have ye ne’er wanted to meet my kin?”

***

They left Randall’s big black charger with Mrs. McFarlane, who would arrange for its sale far to the south, hopefully leading the Redcoats off their trail. It was a beautiful beast, but it was known in neighbouring counties as the captain’s mount. In its place, Jamie bought a sturdy dun mare and a mule to carry their two packs and additional provisions. They would be travelling light across country into Mackenzie lands, where Jamie’s Uncle Colum still held onto enough authority to discourage English raids. There, they hoped to hear word of Jenny Murray and the rest of Jamie’s remaining family.

It was cold and windy in the glens, with snow covering the passes and low hills. They didn’t dare use the Fraser plaid to keep warm, as Highland dress had been formally banned by the English after Culloden. Instead Jamie bought a worn woolen cloak and draped it around them both as they rode.

At night they huddled close to the fire, fully dressed, and told each other stories of the time they were apart.

“Ye’re a doctor now, then?” Jamie asked with interest as they bedded down on their first night. She’d just finished telling him the story of her run-in with Tom Christie, which Jamie found endlessly amusing.

“Yes. Well, a surgeon, actually,” she answered proudly.

Jamie chuckled. “My braw wee wife, raising a bairn an’ showin’ the university lads whas’ what. I’m proud of ye, Sassenach.”

She froze at the word ‘wife’. “Jamie…” she whispered, soft as a feather.

“I ken, Claire. Jus’ let me pretend, for a little while, 'til I grow accustomed tae the idea tha' we’re no’ married, aye?”

“We’ll figure something out. I’ve been on the cusp of asking Frank for a divorce a dozen times, but I always held back, because of Bree. I didn’t want to give him the chance to claim sole custody of her. He knows we were married and can easily expose me as a bigamist. Now, with me disappearing without a word, that’s the least of the accusations he could lay at my door.”

He was beginning to realize just how devoted Claire must be to him, to leave her daughter behind and travel backwards through time just to find him. He was humbled by her.

“I dinna want that man raising Brianna, Claire. He doesna deserve her.”

“That’s the second time you’ve spoken against Frank. I understand why you wouldn’t be fond of him, but surely you don’t blame him for the circumstances of his return. He was a prisoner of war, just like you,” she tried to reason.

“He is nothing like me!” Jamie exploded in sudden anger.

She spun under the blankets to look at him. Filtered by firelight, his face was as menacing as she’d ever witnessed. It was often hidden beneath his gentle demeanour, but he was a bad man to have as an enemy. She placed her palm along his strong jaw, the day’s growth of whiskers abrading her skin.

“Talk to me, Jamie,” she begged. They needed to re-establish the currency of trust between them, if they were going to endure all that lay before them.

“I didna want ye tae worry about Bree. No’ when we canna get back tae her ri’ now. Murtagh will watch o’er her.”

She nodded, encouraging.

“What I dinna tell ye about my time in France is tha’ I was given my missions by ano’er man known as The Wolf. I ne’er met him. Nobody had. But I was captured because the Germans kent exactly where tae find me. They kent things they couldna ha’ known were it no’ for a turncoat inside the Resistance. I told ye about Lord John, the officer who drove me to Lallybroch a’cause of Murtagh’s telegram. He heard me speak of Frank Randall. Twas he tha’ told me tha’ Captain Frank Randall and The Wolf were the same man.”

Claire was silent, absorbing this shocking news. It was true that Frank had never explained his mysterious death and resurrection, saying that the information was classified. She thought of his appearance in Edinburgh the previous year. He had been worn, gaunt. But more than that, he had been broken. The old Frank she had met before his deployment was gone, and in his place was a bitter, hollow man.

“Are you sure, Jamie? I’m sure Lord John would not have made such a statement without being certain of the particulars, but how do you know The Wolf was the man who turned you over to the Germans?”

Jamie sighed. “I ken because tis’ the only explanation that makes any sense. A dozen Nazis were waitin’ for me tae blow up tha’ bridge. They locked me up alone and kept askin’ me about the Resistance, as though I were the head of the operation, and no’ its hands and feet. An’ at the very same time, yer Frank returns from the dead.”

“Not my Frank, love,” she reassured him, doubly thankful that there had been no rapprochement with the man who indirectly turned Jamie over to the Germans to be tortured. They said that war changed a man. It had turned Jamie into a braver, fiercer version of himself. The Frank who came back from overseas was a man she didn’t even recognize.

Suddenly, her spirits brightened. “You do know what this means, don’t you?”

“That the Randalls ‘ave it out for me in e’ry century?” Jamie surmised in a droll fashion that harkened back to their earliest days getting to know one another at Lallybroch.

“No. That I have grounds for divorce. Jamie, he can’t possibly refuse me now! Can’t you see? He’d never let his reputation suffer that kind of blow.”

“Now ‘old on, Sassenach. There’s knowin’ a thing, an’ then there’s provin’ tis true. Lord John told me his tale in confidence, an’ I canna break his trust.” 

“You won’t have to. Leave it to me, lad,” she reassured him. Stubborn, noble man that he was.

They settled comfortably in each other’s arms, warm despite the night’s chill.

“I’m sorry about Lallybroch, Jamie,” she whispered when he thought she’d fallen asleep.

“What dae ye mean, Sorcha?” he asked.

“Even if I divorce Frank, and work out an acceptable custody arrangement for Brianna, I’ll never be able to give you back Lallybroch. It’s your home. You belong there.”

His fingers combed through her unbound hair, coming to rest beneath her chin.

“It doesna pain me as it once would. You are my home now, Claire. I dinna need walls an’ a roof, so long as ye shelter me.”

They kissed tenderly, too tired and sore to attempt anything more. The fire dimmed, and they slept beneath a blanket of icy stars.


	20. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning: brief descriptions of physical torture of a Nazi prisoner of war

January 13, 1749, Castle Leoch, Scotland

They trotted into the bailey of Castle Leoch seven days later, road-weary, chilled and filthy, but otherwise unharassed. The week had also served as a rustic and unofficial second honeymoon, allowing them to reconnect after the time spent separated by the war. In that respect, Claire cautiously deemed it a success. They traded memories and hardships back and forth like fragile gifts. Tears regularly froze like diamonds on their cheeks. Timid mirth escaped in wreaths of breathy fog. Step by careful step, they were finding their way back to one another.

An older man with a patch over one eye approached them from the stables. Noticing him, Jamie leapt nimbly from their horse and clapped him heartily on his slim shoulders. An animated conversation in Gaelic ensued. Claire noticed stable boys and a few others going about their business out-of-doors stop to stare. Clearly, Jamie’s return was both unexpected and noteworthy.

She carefully dismounted, feeling every mile of heath and moor cramping her thighs and lower back. By sheer force of habit, she began to untack the mare and mule.

“Leave it for the lads, Sassenach. C’mere, this is someone I’d like ye tae meet.” Two boys, no older than eight, had in fact taken over her work. Their bags were being unloaded and carried into the main building. Claire looked around, trying to get a sense for the place. The castle was tall and faced in granite, far older in appearance than Lallybroch. It was defended by high ramparts and a sturdy keep. The people she had seen thus far wore ragged clothing, but appeared well-fed. So this was what might have become of Jamie, had he stayed behind after Culloden.

Very conscious of her own shabby appearance, Claire accepted Jamie’s outstretched hand.

“Sassenach, this is Auld Alex. Alex has kent me since I was a young lout. Alex, may I present my wife, Claire Fraser.”

She made what she hoped was a suitable curtsey and was greeted with a gruff hello. The two men continued to speak in Gaelic, catching up, she supposed. She was distracted by mulling over Jamie’s form of introduction. It made sense to continue to affirm their status as a married couple. They had definitely been behaving as such. She only wished there was a way to make it true. Frank wouldn’t be born for another two hundred years. Certainly she was free to marry the man she loved?

“Are ye comin’, Claire?” Jamie asked. She realized he was standing by the main wooden door, looking at her expectantly. She shook herself and followed him into the narrow, torch-lit entryway. Their footfalls echoed on the rough flagstones. She was soon quite disoriented as she followed Jamie’s sure steps through passageways, up stairs and across a series of anterooms. Instead of the great hall, they emerged in the kitchens. The bustle of a half-dozen women dimmed to a perceptible murmur as they entered. Claire felt suspicious eyes appraising her.

“ _Seamus ruaidh! Dia a mholadh, tha thu beò_!” A short, wide woman who could have been Mrs. Fitz’s twin sister bustled towards them, enveloping Jamie in a warm hug. He had to bend nearly double to return the affection, but he did so with a smile on his face that warmed her heart.

“ _Mrs. McNab a charaid. Tha mi air ionndrainn ort._ »

Drawing her forward with an arm thrown across her shoulders, Jamie switched into English.

“Claire, I’d like ye tae meet a very dear friend, Mary McNab. My uncle Colum may be laird of the MacKenzie, but it’s Mrs. McNab who runs this castle. Mrs. McNab, this is Claire Fraser. My wife.”

She detected only the faintest lifting of eyebrows before she too was enveloped in a warm embrace.

“Och, if ye arena the most bonnie thing I e’er saw. I always prayed this one would find a good lass tae watch o’er him. We worrit somethin’ fierce when they said auld Black Jack caught ‘im, after the Rising. Four years wi’ nary a word. But here ye are! Ach, ye’re nought but skin an’ bones, Claire! Does our Jamie no’ let ye eat?” 

Claire blinked at this voluble outpouring but could tell the words were sincerely meant.

“Pleased to meet you, Mrs. McNab. I’m afraid we’ve been travelling across country for a time. Food was hard to come by.”

No sooner had the words left her mouth, they were seated on a low bench and presented with a dizzying array of foodstuffs: bread and oatcakes, thick mutton stew with turnips, winter apples and stewed cherry pudding. Jamie was silent as he devoured his meal with relish, so Claire attempted to answer Mrs. McNab’s barrage of questions. Yes, she was English, from Oxfordshire. No, she hadn’t yet met any of Jamie’s family. Yes, their wedding had been a modest affair, some two years previous. No, they hadn’t any children. She bowed her head at this last answer, worrying about and missing Brianna fiercely. Jamie must not have been as distracted by his feast as he appeared, because his left hand crept into her lap, giving her leg a reassuring squeeze.

When they both couldn’t eat another bite, they were shown upstairs to a guest chamber where a wooden tub of warm water awaited.

“Rest a bit, the twa of ye,” Mrs. McNab insisted. “Himself will be eager tae see ye, lad, but ano’er few hours willna signify. I’ll let him know ye’ll present yerselves at suppertime.”

Hardly able to keep pace with this violent change in fortunes, Claire and Jamie stood frozen just inside the closed door for a long moment before breaking into nervous laughter.

“Do ye ken, Sassenach, I dinna think I’ve had a proper bath since a’fore I left ye at Lallybroch.”

“You must be out of practice, then,” she replied with mock seriousness. “Perhaps I should stay close, in case you need any assistance.”

A familiar glint entered Jamie’s lambent eyes. “Oh, aye. I plan tae keep ye verra close indeed, _mo chridhe.”_

***

He woke to the whisper of sunlight against his cheek. In those weightless seconds between slumber and wakefulness, he imagined he was in the laird’s chamber at Lallybroch. He and Claire must have taken an afternoon nap, as they sometimes did during the golden summer after Bree was born. It explained the familiar pressure of her kisses inching downward from his navel, but not the coarse linens pressed to his back.

Coming fully awake, he buried a hand in her loose curls, relieved that this part of the dream, at least, was real. He felt more like himself than at any time since the war, and while the hearty meal and delicious bath helped, he knew he owed most of that feeling to the woman who was now painting the arcs of his hips with her tongue.

“Welcome back, sleepyhead,” she murmured in a honeyed voice that made his toes curl.

“Were ye needin’ me for somethin’, Sassenach. I’ll have ye ken I was havin’ verra pleasant dreams, a’fore ye tickled me awake,” he teased, enjoying the well-trodden pathways of their banter.

“Very pleasant, indeed, if this is your reaction to them,” she answered, grasping his cock and giving it a fluid pump.

He spread his legs in silent invitation. Taunting him, her head skirted his most urgent need and dipped towards the warm, loose skin of his baws.

Too late, he scissored his legs and rolled onto his side. Claire was tossed to the mattress.

“Jamie?” she asked, voice careful and hesitant. “What… what is that?”

He spun to sit up facing away from her. He’d been so immersed in pleasure, he’d forgotten entirely about the scars on his testicles left behind from his time as a German prisoner. He could only imagine what they looked like in the bright sunlight of this bedchamber, the remnants of large blisters where the electric iron had branded him. He couldn’t look at Claire’s beautiful face in that moment. It was too much, to feel so much joy and so much pain at the same time. It surpassed the limits of him and overflowed as anger.

“None of yer damn business,” he growled, almost panting with the effort of not running naked from the room.

Minutes of fragile silence ensued as he cursed his cowardice. He stared at his feet; healthy, unharmed. He’d felt the hurt buried inside of himself for so long, he’d forgotten that there were places where it still showed at the surface. All-seeing in her love for him, it had taken Claire a mere week to find them all.

“That’s not the way this works, lad,” she finally spoke, voice firm from just beyond his shoulder. “You made me swear I was yours, and no-one else’s. Well, I am, as you are mine. You do not get to possess my soul without giving yours in return. When you hurt, I bleed. So you better bloody tell me who gave you those marks.”

“He’s dead,” he replied automatically. It should have been a relief, but it was just another shame he carried. That he had not been the one to kill his tormentor.

“Who is?”

“Doctor August Hirt,” he pronounced the name like a curse. “One of the Nazis responsible for interrogatin’ me. He committed suicide, when the Germans lost the war.”

Lord John had been the one to inform him, sitting beside his cot in the British field hospital. It was clear he was going to live at that point but losing the opportunity for vengeance set back his progress by weeks while he wrestled with his demons alone.

“Do they still hurt?” A gentle hand rested on the bare skin of his shoulder, and he fought down the urge to flinch away.

“Nah, they’re numb, mostly. I, uhh, I wasna certain I would be able tae… serve ye properly. The doctors at the hospital werena particularly optimistic.” He blushed, remembering that awkward conversation with an avuncular Irish medic.

In truth, their sexual reunion in the Aviemore brothel had been so emotional, so fraught with barely controlled violence, that his potential impotence had been the last thing to cross his mind. Claire’s enthusiastic reaction to his lovemaking had laid one demon to rest, at least.

“They said I’ll ne’er sire a bairn,” he confessed, feeling even more exposed than his nakedness allowed, as though his outer defences had been scraped away and he was trying to hide beneath a blade of grass.

“Oh, Jamie,” she sighed.

“I dinna want yer pity, Claire. Thas’ why I didna mention it.” That and the fact he was a coward, terrified what his confession might mean to their tenuous reconnection.

“I’m nought but a trace of the man ye marrit. I ken we spoke of havin’ bairns of our own. Perhaps, t’would be better for ye…”

A hand clapped over his mouth before he could give voice to his greatest fear.

“Not another word, James Fraser. I shall give you my whole soul, until our lives shall be done, remember? There were no conditions when we gave each other those blood vows. I didn’t travel backwards through time just to let you give up our marriage on account of a few little scars.” As Claire spoke, she climbed into his lap, her naked arse resting on his thighs.

“I dinna want ye tae find me hideous,” he confessed, mortified at his vanity. At the same time, his hands were already caressing her round hips, her fluted spine, the soft down that covered the wings of her shoulder blades. His body called out for hers, no matter the gulfs of time or circumstance that separated them.

“Hmmm..” she hummed, feigning consideration as she kissed him lightly. She slid to the floor at his feet in a graceful glide. The tidy ovals of her fingertips brushed the hair covering his upper thighs with deliberate languor, giving him the chance to object. Breath caught in his throat. Without consulting his brain, his cock rose insistently, begging for her touch.

“Your genitals could use a little disfigurement, if I’m being honest. They’re far too attractive. How else am I to drive away all those bonnie Scottish lassies?” She smiled up at him gently with her burnt sugar eyes, letting him know she was teasing, before blowing softly against the mutilated skin in question. Every hair on his body stood up on end.

“Sassenach?” he said, breathless.

“Hmmm?”

“Go tae ‘ell.”

She laughed, then proceeded to worship every last inch of him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Seamus ruaidh! Dia a mholadh, tha thu beò! - Red Jamie! Praise to God, you are alive!  
> Mrs. McNab a charaid. Tha mi air ionndrainn ort. - Mrs. McNab, my friend. I have missed you.  
> mo chridhe - my heart


	21. Chapter 20

January 13, 1749, Castle Leoch, Scotland

Ever efficient, Mrs. McNab had found clothing in her size and ‘more suitable tae greet the laird’. Claire couldn’t deny her one dress was plain and already worn in places, but she wasn’t eager to experience eighteenth century undergarments first-hand. Magnificent in his Fraser plaid and a clean sark and tunic, Jamie looked on with a gleam in his eyes as her breath was constricted by the layers of cotton, lacing and whalesbone.

“I’m glad you find this amusing,” she muttered after they were left alone again.

“Oh, aye,” he nodded sincerely. “Ye look verra bonnie, Sassenach.“ He touched her hair gently where it was already uncoiling from the elaborate style a young parlour maid had fashioned. “Do ye ken wha’ I’m lookin’ forward tae?”

“Watching me faint from lack of oxygen?”

“Nah, peelin’ each layer from ye, later.”

***

The Great Hall of Castle Leoch was a monumental place. Beamed in wood, clad in massive flagstones, it was easily forty yards long and half as wide. Torches lined the walls and iron candelabras hung from the high ceiling. The overall impression was one of a sparsely lit cave, like visiting the Oracle at Delphi. For the thousandth time since coming through the Stones, Claire marveled at the fact that she was, quite literally, living through history.

As though he sensed her astonishment, Jamie looped his arm through hers and gave her a reassuring pat. She took comfort in his familiarity with local customs and ceremony and vowed, for once in her life, to follow his lead.

They drew a great deal of attention as they walked down the central aisle of the hall. Most of the glances seemed kind or curious, but she could also her the occasional spiteful hiss of “Sassenach”, reminding her that the beloved nickname was, in fact, an epithet in these times.

They came to a halt in front of a raised dais on which was laid an elaborate table. Three strikingly different people were seated there. To her left was a young squire, perhaps thirteen, with lank brown hair and pale blue eyes. In the middle sat the laird himself, distinguished by his elaborate wooden chair and air of authority. She had expected an older version of Jamie, but instead found a small man with a face worn like the surface of a walnut. Only his eyes were familiar, perceptive and intimidating with sapphire depths.

It was to her right that her eyes were drawn, however. There sat a woman of indeterminate age with blond hair so pale it bordered on white. Her eyes were an uncanny shade of green. She was watching the two of them like a bird of prey sizing up its next meal. Claire imagined this must be Jamie’s aunt, although he’d never mentioned the woman.

Colum Mackenzie rose. She could see now he had some kind of deformity that affected his stature. The noisy hall fell quiet.

“ _Seumas Alexander Calum MacKenzie Fraser, fàilte dhachaigh. Tha do uachdaran agus do chinneadh taingeil airson do shàbhailteachd_.” Despite his diminutive size, Colum MacKenzie’s voice rang against the stone walls with a clash like cymbals. Here was a man who was yet master of his domain.

“ _Tha mi taingeil airson do fhàilte chridheil, bràthair mo mhàthar. Is urrainn dhomh mo bhean, Claire Elizabeth Fraser, a thoirt a-steach,”_ Jamie replied in his mellifluous Gaelic.

She stepped forward and curtseyed deeply. She’d practiced the words over and over with Jamie in their chamber, though he insisted they were not necessary. Still, when the time came, they almost stuck in her throat.

“ _Tha e na urram dhomh coinneachadh riut, mo thighearna_ ,” she managed to utter, faltering on the awkward syllables. There was a faint murmur from the crowd behind her. Colum’s severe mouth twitched upward briefly.

“It seems my nephew has chosen his wife wisely, Lady Fraser. Not only are you beautiful, but you are politic and wise as well. Come, sit by my side while we dine and tell me what brings such a singular Englishwoman to live amongst the Scots.”

The blonde woman had shifted into the shadows, but Claire could feel her eyes upon them as she ate and made polite small talk with Colum. She took comfort from Jamie’s warm bulk near her left shoulder.

Colum inquired as the manner of their meeting. Claire recounted the tale she and Jamie had agreed upon; close enough to the truth to pass as such. She’d come to Scotland with her first husband, an Englishman, who had died in battle. Jamie had literally stumbled across her path, badly wounded after Culloden. She’d nursed him back to health, and they’d fallen in love. They’d been separated for a time but had recently reunited.

“Ye’re a healer then?” Colum asked, leaning forward with interest. “A Beaton?”

“Something like that,” she answered, a bit vague on the details of eighteenth-century medicine

“We havena had a healer at Leoch for some time,” Colum explained. “Mayhap once ye’ve settled, ye can visit the surgery, see those that need a healer most?”

“It would be my pleasure, milord.” And she found she actually meant it. This was Jamie’s family, and she wanted to help them in any way she could during their limited sojourn.

The MacKenzie served a strong, sweet wine he referred to as _Rhenish_ and after a few goblets Claire felt that strange detachment from events that she associated with intoxication. She observed the other diners, boisterously leading their lives, and marveled at the dogged perseverance of the Highland Scots, maintaining their way of life and language in the face of relentless opposition from their English overlords. It made her sad, knowing it was destined to end, and end poorly.

“Is it like you remember?” she asked Jamie, who had been unusually quiet during their meal.

“No’ really. Mebbe on the surface, but tis no’ but a show of hopeless defiance.” He lowered his voice, bending so close to her ear that his words ruffled her hair. “I read, in one of Frank’s books, the MacKenzie were one of the last clans outside of the isles to resist the Clearances. Twas why I kent it was safe tae bring ye here. Ano’er ten years, no longer, and all this will be nought but memories.”

She held his warm hand and squeezed. It was impossible to imagine how this must feel to her lover, who was born into this time and had seen the future of Scotland first-hand.

“Is there anything we can do? To help them, I mean?”

Jamie smiled sadly. “Ye’ve a kind heart, Sassenach, and I love ye for it. But we are but two people. How can we stand against the rising tide?”

She was about to answer when Colum’s chair scraped backwards. The clamour in the hall ceased.

The gnarled man spoke at great length in Gaelic, his clarion voice rising and falling in the echoing chamber. At first Jamie translated the salient bits for her: thanks for the meal and the ongoing protection of the clan, gratitude for his nephew’s miraculous return, a warm welcome to his new wife. The thread of the speech veered towards the political, and Jamie’s words came less frequently, eventually drying up altogether. When she glanced his way, he looked stern and mildly shocked.

“What is it?” she whispered under her breath.

“He… my uncle, he’s callin’ upon a soothsayer tae predict the fortunes of Clan Mackenzie. A woman named Geillis Duncan. This isna like him, Sassenach. He’s a learned man, a tactician, no’ some crofter tha’ holds tae charms an’ incantations.”

Just then, the blond woman from the dais reappeared, robed in a mantle of white fox fur. She cupped an egg-shaped stone, some kind of agate, with alternating bands of purple and milky white circling its heart. Without warning she fell to the ground, her slim shoulders rolling against some internal turmoil. An eerie voice exploded across the room, an avian croak reminiscent of rusty hinges. With every pronouncement, the seer heaved and groaned, as though expelling some poison from inside herself. A shiver went down Claire’s spine. Looking at Colum MacKenzie, she could see that he was captivated, hanging rapt on the woman’s every word. As a performance it was truly riveting, but she had no idea what it could possibly mean.

After at least ten minutes, the woman wound down and slumped, boneless, on the cold floor. With a nod from Colum, two retainers scurried forward and lifted her in their arms, carrying her from the room. This seemed to be a signal to the assembly that it was time to retire. They filed away in small groups, speaking quietly amongst themselves.

Claire desperately wanted Jamie to interpret what she had just witnessed, but the bulging muscle along his jaw and the frosty glaze in his eyes forbade it. Explanations would have to wait until they were back in the privacy of their rooms and his temper had cooled. 

Jamie was approaching Colum. The differences in the two men could not have been more extreme: the one, tall, imposing, with contempt crackling from his every pore; the other, frail, sickly, with a fire of fanaticism lighting his face.

“Ye heard wha’ the _ban-druidh_ said, _mac mo phiuthar_? Yer arrival is a sign that the clan’s fortunes are about to change,” Colum asked, eyes aglow.

“Aye, I ‘eard. She didna specify exactly how, now did she? She may as weel ‘ave said the weather t’morrow would differ from t’day.”

“Miss Duncan is my closest advisor, now that yer Uncle Dougal is ded. While ye rest under my roof, ye will pay her the respect she deserves,” the small man growled.

“As ye say, Uncle,” Jamie demurred, bowing stiffly and then stalking away. Claire bid her host a hasty goodnight, following her husband from the room.

***

“So, this Duncan woman says you’re, what? The future King of Scotland?”

Jamie had disappeared for a time after dinner, but they were now back in their chambers, preparing for bed.

“Her exact words were more like ‘from his loins will spring a free Scotland tha’ will bleed the English white’”, he corrected with mocking disdain.

“I don’t know how I feel about another woman discussing your loins, my lad,” Claire quipped. He chuckled, despite himself.

It gave him great comfort to voice his open contempt for Geillis Duncan to his wife. At least he didn’t need to worry about Claire being gullible enough to believe the charlatan’s ploys. His Uncle Colum was a different matter entirely.

He’d made some discrete inquiries of people about the castle whom he trusted. The Battle of Culloden had changed his uncle, who had previously never openly supported the Jacobite cause. That was his Uncle Dougal’s domain, and he had paid for it with his life. Then, shortly after the Scottish defeat, Colum’s wife Laetitia had died of a fever, leaving Colum alone to lead the clan and raise young Hamish. Hamish was a braw lad, but only thirteen, and Colum’s health was rapidly failing. Jamie could sense the desperation in his every word. Without a strong leader to succeed him, Clan Mackenzie would wither up and be blown away on the bleak Scottish wind, as many of the other Highland clans had already done.

Jamie wasn’t a fatalist by nature but living in the twentieth century had given him a different perspective on the future of the Scots. Colum wanted to reclaim Scotland’s former glory, returning to the golden age of Robert the Bruce or the Scottish Restoration. Jamie would prefer it if his kin did not die of starvation.

“Ye need tae ken, Claire, Colum will want me tae lead the clan, tae take over as laird,” he confessed. He could already sense his uncle’s machinations at work in the way the Mackenzie retainers deferred to him and insisted on using his old title of Laird Broch Tuarach.

“And what say you to that?” his wife asked, glancing his way.

 _Ifrinn_ , he really had made a right mess of things if Claire had cause to ask him that question. In his haste to see her safe and to protect his own tender feelings, he had forgotten the one truth that transcended all others.

“I belong where ye are, Sassenach. And ye need tae return tae yer daughter. I havena lost sight of it.”

“Our daughter,” she corrected, eyes softening.

He loved Brianna like she was his own, but “A bairn can only ‘ave one father, Claire,” he pronounced sadly.

“Says who?”

Defiant to the last, his Sassenach.

“Frank was her father when we met,” she went on. “And when she was born, you became her Da. I’m not denying that our lives are considerably complicated by Frank’s return, but on one point I’m absolutely certain – Brianna is your daughter. A child can never have too much love and protection.”

He swallowed thickly, nodding. His wife was a miracle, always giving him something more than he knew how to ask for. Now, if only he could secure news of Jenny and her bairns, he could return to the twentieth century and live out the rest of his days in peace. He had experienced enough upheaval and tumult for many lifetimes.

“Have you heard any news of your sister?” Claire asked with her usual perceptive timing.

“Nothin’ as yet. Colum is canny. He willna tell me of her directly, for he kens I’ll leave as soon as I ken her fate.”

“Then we’ll just have to out-canny him, won’t we?”

He smiled. He could not imagine what he had done to deserve this woman, but he was bound to her for life. He would happily spend the rest of his days reminding her of that. Which gave him an idea. If Colum was going to hold them as virtual hostages in the hopes of fulfilling some fool’s prophecy, he was going to ask for something in return. Something to reaffirm Claire’s place in his life, and he in hers.

“Aye, we will. But first…” he beckoned her with a crooked finger.

Claire raised an eyebrow but sauntered over.

“Yer laces look a wee bit tight, Sassenach. I’ve been watchin’ yer breasts heave about all evenin’. Lemme ease yer sufferin’.”

“Oh, by all means…” Claire drawled, presenting herself for disrobing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Seumas Alexander Calum MacKenzie Fraser, fàilte dhachaigh. Tha do uachdaran agus do chinneadh taingeil airson do shàbhailteachd. - James Alexander Malcolm MacKenzie Fraser, welcome home. Your lord and clan are grateful for your safety.  
> Tha mi taingeil airson do fhàilte chridheil, bràthair mo mhàthar. Is urrainn dhomh mo bhean, Claire Elizabeth Fraser, a thoirt a-steach. - I am grateful for your warm welcome. May I introduce my wife, Claire Elizabeth Fraser.  
> Tha e na urram dhomh coinneachadh riut, mo thighearna. - It is an honour to meet you, my lord.  
> ban-druidh - witch  
> mac mo phiuthar - my sister's son


	22. Chapter 21

March 5, 1749, Castle Leoch, Scotland

Their days at Leoch settled into a regular rhythm. Claire would spend her mornings in the gardens or the kitchens, helping Mrs. McNab and the other women of the household. As delicately as possible, she tried to introduce foodstuffs and practices that would help the clan survive the coming hardships. In the afternoons she saw patients in the surgery, doing her best with healing herbs and primitive antiseptics to treat the sickness and common injuries of the time.

Jamie assisted Auld Alex in the stable and rode out regularly with the other men to hunt, doing his part to feed his people. His muscles regained the firm bulk she recognized from after his recovery at Lallybroch. Her hands loved to apply smooth pressure to them, passage slicked by fragrant oil, when they ended their days together. Jamie would lie still, practically purring at her touch. Piece by tentative piece, they were rebuilding the footings of the well-tested bond between them.

Not long after they arrived at Leoch, Jamie had surprised her one afternoon by asking her to don her best new dress and meet him in the castle’s small chapel. Assembled there were some of the faces she was beginning to recognize, including Colum and Mrs. McNab. But her eyes were captivated by Jamie himself, standing near the altar, resplendent in his plaid and Highland regalia. He strode towards her and greeted her with a deep, courtly bow.

“Your servant, Madam,” he began.

“Tis weel o’er a year since we took an oath tae be bound tae each other fer all of our days. An’ so I ask ye again, Claire Elizabeth Beauchamp Fraser, will ye pledge yerself tae me? Fer the love of ye is the blood in my veins an’ the air in my lungs.”

Tears blocked her throat, but she nodded swiftly and watched Jamie’s handsome face transform with a radiant smile. It struck her that he had found the perfect gesture to reaffirm their bond. Their hand-fasting, while perfectly legitimate in eighteenth century Scotland, had no bearing or relationship to her twentieth century marriage to Frank. And yet when she looked back on her marriage to Jamie, it was the impromptu ceremony in Murtagh’s croft that held the most meaning. It was when they chose each other out of love, rather than necessity.

The simple ritual was presided over by Colum. Now knowing what to expect, Claire opened her palm for the blade, but Jamie surprised her by turning over her hand first and slipping a thin silver band onto her finger. He held up his left hand to show his own ring, now similarly narrow.

“It has saved me more times than I can remember. I reckon it has enough strength fer two.”

Claire smiled, twisting the ring against her skin and feeling it warm to her body.

“It’s the bearer who has all the strength,” she reminded him. “The ring is simply a reminder.”

“Then let it be a reminder tae us both. That we are stronger when we are t’gether.”

That had been several fortnights ago, and the ring had never left her finger. Having heard Jamie’s story of the lengths he took to avoid being stripped of his ring in the camps, Claire thought she understood. It was an extension of her body, the part of her that represented her connection to Jamie, and to sever it would surely cause unbearable pain.

As the winter progressed, they were both frustrated by Colum’s maneuverings to block their departure. Their host continued to insist the way south was watched by English patrols. Jamie’s sister’s whereabouts remained a well-guarded secret. According to Colum, they were both needed here at Castle Leoch, where they would preside over the rebirth of Scottish independence.

This last point was particularly painful for Jamie to bear, conscious as he was that he and Claire were not likely to be producing an heir, future king of Scotland or otherwise. Each episode in which Geillis Duncan ‘foresaw’ this circumstance, every wishful glance Colum directed at his wife’s still-flat belly, hurt his pride and sent him into quiet gloom.

For her part, Claire missed Brianna desperately. She knew her daughter was safe and well-cared for at Lallybroch, with Murtagh, Mrs. Fitz, Cook, and even Frank watching over her, but she missed her dimpled smiles, silly prattle, and even her fractious outbursts. Jamie missed her as well, but it was an older wound, already scabbed over. Still, lying together in bed while the rain beat against the lead-glass window, sharing memories of their little girl, was both a balm and a pain at once.

***

One afternoon there was a quiet knock on the surgery door, and Geillis Duncan entered. They regularly crossed paths around the castle, but this was the first time the seer had sought her out. Claire braced herself for the coming ordeal, assuming Geillis was here on some mission of diplomacy for Colum.

“Good afternoon, Mistress Duncan,” she greeted coolly. “What can I do for you?”

“G’day to ye, Mistress Fraser. I cannae go a day wi’out hearin’ someone praise yer gift for healin’. Even Colum’s suffering seems somewhat relieved by the unguent ye made fer him.” As she spoke, Geillis wandered around the surgery, picking up and investigating different objects.

“If you came all this way to convey the laird’s thanks, you needn’t have bothered. He has said as much to me personally.”

“Ye dinna like me, do ye Mistress Fraser?” Instead of seeming upset by this fact, Geillis seemed amused.

“I don’t particularly know you,” Claire answered, making a rare attempt at political appeasement. She and Jamie needed to escape this gilded cage and making an enemy of the laird’s trusted adviser would not help their cause.

“Hmmm,” Geillis hummed, peering at a jar of dried chaga mushrooms.

“Was there some medical reason for calling upon me, Mistress Duncan?” Claire asked, starting to lose patience.

“Oh, aye,” the blonde woman replied, as though only just remembering her original purpose. “I ‘ave this blain upon my upper arm. Could ye look at it fer me? It doesna want tae go away.”

Comforted by this routine request, Claire relaxed her vigilance.

“Certainly. Come over here by the window and lower your sleeve, if you will.”

At first, she saw nothing amiss, and wondered if the seer had fabricated an excuse for her visit. Looking into her patient’s shrewd green gaze, she glanced down again. Blinked. Stared.

“Geillis,” she whispered. “This is a vaccine scar.” As though the woman might be unaware how she came to have a uniquely modern mark on her bicep.

Jade eyes appraised her with an intensity that bordered on the predatory.

“Are you… from the future?”

A curt nod and cunning smile were her answer. Claire felt an icy chill run down her spine.

“The prognosticating, the trances, those are all for show. You’re just using your knowledge of what will happen to trick Colum into believing you’re clairvoyant. God, Geillis, whatever for?”

“I’ve been waiting for you, Claire Randall. You and the man who followed you through the Stones, but who is not your husband.”

***

Jamie paced back and forth across their room like a caged animal.

“Ye may no’ be a diviner, Geillis Duncan, but ye’re still a witch. Ye’re telling me ye’ve kent this whole time who we are an’ why we needed tae get back tae the Stones, an’ ye never uttered a word?” When he was truly incensed, a vein bulged beneath Jamie’s left eye. It was livid and purple at that moment.

“It wasn’t the right occasion,” Geillis explained for what must have been the dozenth time. She had been frustratingly reticent to share many details, saying that revealing too much could affect the course of history.

“An’ now it is?” Jamie growled.

“Yes.”

Claire noticed that Geillis’ thick Scottish brogue had virtually disappeared and was replaced by a modern Lowlands accent. This, more than anything else, convinced her of the truth of the woman’s claim. She truly was from the year 1997. How she came to know their story, and why she was suddenly interested in helping them was another matter altogether.

“Explain tha’ bit tae me again, if ye please. The part where we follow ye tae the Isle of Lewis. Fer it makes no sense, if the Stones are tae the south.”

Geillis repeated what she had already told them. She would help them run away from Leoch, but instead of returning southward to Craig na Dun, they would travel far to the north, to the Outer Hebrides. There another circle of standing stones would grant them passage back to the twentieth century, but only on March 21st.

“What’s so important about the spring equinox?” Claire asked, her scientific curiosity getting the better of her.

“Most of the time, travel through the Stones is impossible except for a rare group of people. We call them travelers. Your husband is a traveler. But for everyone else like you and I, the portal through the Stones is only open during certain ancient festivals: Alban Arthnan, Alban Eiler, Alban Heruin and Alban Elved. The next such opening is Alban Eiler, the day the Auld Ones celebrate equal parts night and day and the end of winter. We have to reach the Callanish Stones before that day or wait another three months.”

Jamie made a frustrated noise in the back of his throat that Claire recognized. He was losing patience quickly.

“Geillis, you have to understand how… well… incredible this all sounds. We want to believe you…” Here Jamie snorted. “…but we’re going to need… I don’t know… something more substantial…a reason to leave the relative safety of Leoch and follow you northward…”

“Jenny Fraser Murray lives,” Geillis pronounced as though she’d suddenly remembered this piece of vital knowledge. “She took an assumed name and fled north with her husband and three children when Jonathan Randall seized Lallybroch and declared them traitors to the Crown. The Mackenzie of Seaforth shelter them in Stornoway, not far from the Callanish Stones. If you will not believe me about the rest, believe that.”

“ _Nighean na galla_ ,” Jamie erupted. “If ye’re leadin’ us down the path, woman, I’ll burn ye at the stake myself.”

Claire reached for his forearm, which pulsed with tension beneath her palm. She looked imploringly into his eyes. Slowly, the fire behind Jamie’s glance dimmed. She arched a brow. The corner of his mouth twitched in acknowledgement. The electricity in the confined air of the room dissipated, and all three drew a deep breath.

“Very well, Geillis. What do we need to do?” Claire asked for them both.

***

They left Castle Leoch that same night, furtive as thieves under cover of darkness. Jamie didn’t want to draw down Colum’s ire upon any of their acquaintances by implicating them in their escape, so they fled on stolen horses with only their belongings and no spare food. The ground was hard with frost as they galloped away, an eerie fog lying in the glens that reflecting the moon’s silver light.

Neither Geillis nor Claire were experienced riders and their progress was slowed as a result. Jamie rode in the rear, one hand on the pommel of his sword, ears and eyes alert for any sign of pursuit. He drove them onwards mercilessly, far beyond the limits of their bodies.

When the watery sun was just beginning to blush the horizon, he finally called for a rest. They had journeyed beyond Mackenzie lands and into the territory of the MacDonell, although they were by no means safe. The horses were hobbled in a deep hollow out of sight of the carriage road to Ullapool they had been following. Claire and Geillis practically fell to the ground in exhaustion as soon as they dismounted, but Jamie ranged about gathering wood for a small fire and collecting water from a nearby burn, indefatigable.

Claire roused from an awkward doze to see Jamie whittling the end of a long stick with his _sgain dubh_.

“What are you doing?” she murmured, trying not to wake Geillis as she slept nearby. “You need to rest, Jamie.”

“We need food,” he replied baldly. “There’s trout in the burn. I’ll try tae spear us a couple.”

She crawled to his side, solid and warm and beloved. He paused his carving long enough to kiss her temple.

“How fortunate that I married a man well-acquainted with living the rough life of an outlaw,” she teased.

Jamie grunted. “Twasn’t part of my plan tae show ye firsthand.”

“Blood of my blood,” she repeated. “Whither thou goest, James Fraser, I will go. Bad things happen when we’re apart.”

He looked down into her cherished face, no less beautiful for the smudges of dust and lines of fatigue.

“I love ye, Claire.”

It was a rare declaration, made even more unusual by the inclusion of her Christian name. Often sentimental to the verge of poetry, Jamie still didn’t bandy the word ‘love’ around. He would much rather show his adoration than speak of it. It was one of the many things that endeared him to her.

“I love you too, Jamie. So much. Thank you for keeping me safe, and for taking this chance so that we can get home to Bree. I know you don’t trust Geillis, but I think we made the right choice.”

They kissed softly, foreheads pressed together. The wind stirred in a nearby copse of pine trees, who whispered their secrets in reply. Overhead the sky was an even steel gray colour. A pair of large birds flew by, heading northward, silent but for the steady rush of their wings.

“Greylag geese,” Jamie remarked. “They mate for life, ye ken.”

“Like us,” she said into the musky skin of his neck. His arms tightened around her shoulders.

“Aye.”

***

They were twenty miles from Ullapool and had paused at nightfall to water their mounts when they were set upon by five men on horseback. Their only warning came as their horses grew restive, stomping their hooves in the muddy riverbank. Jamie grabbed his sword from the scabbard next to his saddle and spun in circles, searching for the danger he knew was nearby.

“Claire! Geillis! Get behind those rocks and dinna come out a’fore I call for ye!”

Claire hesitated, not wanting to leave her husband to face a threat alone, but there was little she could do unarmed and untrained. Geillis grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her towards a nearby outcropping.

The noise of the skirmish that followed was horrifying. Horses squealed in terror. Guttural men’s voices filled the night, along with the clash of steel upon steel. She could hear Jamie’s laboured panting and the deep growl that rose from his chest as he met their assailants blow for blow. 

The conflict could not have lasted longer than two minutes, but they seemed an eternity. In the end there was triumphant shouting, and the sound of horses galloping away. The hush of an early spring evening rolled back across the landscape. Claire strained her ears, listening for any sign from Jamie that it was safe to emerge. None came. Had he been taken hostage? Seized by the MacKenzie? Or yet worse, injured so badly that he couldn’t call out? Her mind sheared away from any other option.

“Stay here,” she whispered to Geillis, before creeping out from behind their shelter. Enough moonlight shone between the clouds to throw shadows across the scene. The soil beside the river had been churned into a mire by the trampling of horses. Besides the slow-flowing current, there was no movement to be seen.

“Jamie?” she called out tentatively.

Nothing. She stepped closer to the river.

“Jamie?”

A low groan came from the shadow of a tree on her left. She rushed towards it blindly, and nearly tripped over the prone body of her husband.

“Jamie! My god, what happened? Where are you hurt?” 

Not waiting for his response, her hands patted his familiar form gently. Nearing his waist, she met the warm stickiness of blood.

“You’re injured,” she said needlessly. “I need to see in order to treat you.” 

“Geillis!” she called over her shoulder. Their companion arrived by her side, breathless.

“ _A dhia_! Is he dead?” she asked in her typical brusque manner.

“No. No, he’s not. But I need a fire, boiling water, and the bandages from my saddle bag…” She stopped speaking, looking around, as though their horses would suddenly rematerialize. They had been stolen, of course, and along with them all the contents of their sparse luggage.

“Fucking hell,” Claire swore.

“My sentiments exactly,” Geillis observed dryly.

Jamie chose that moment to rise to consciousness with a start, trying to sit upright and then collapsing with a pained cry.

“There you are,” Claire said gratefully. “You need to lie still, Jamie. You’ve been hurt. Stabbed, I imagine.”

“Sassenach?” he asked, staring up at her in confusion.

“Yes, love. It’s me. Be still. I need to examine you.”

“The horses?”

“Gone, I’m afraid. I have to say, I’m beginning to have doubts about the lauded hospitality of the Highlanders,” she joked, trying to appear calm.

Jamie chuckled, then moaned. Beside them, Geillis was rummaging through the deep pockets of her dress.

“Aha!” she announced triumphantly, holding up a small object. “I kent I’d have a use for this.”

It was a cigarette lighter. A thoroughly modern solution to their current predicament. Claire clapped her hands around Geillis’ shoulders and shook her gently. 

“Geillis Duncan, you’re brilliant! Let’s get a fire started.”

In a short while, a merry flame illuminated the ground close to where Jamie lay. After washing her hands thoroughly in the river, Claire carefully investigated the stab wound on his left flank. The rush of his blood had already slowed to a slow trickle as she dabbed gently around the site with strips torn from her shift and dipped into the river’s current.

“It’s deep, but it didn’t puncture anything vital. As long as we can keep it clean, the muscle will heal by itself. But you’re going to need to rest before we can continue towards Ullapool.”

Both Jamie and Geillis objected.

“We canna stay here, Sassenach,” he argued. “Those reivers may return. And even if they dinna, I canna hunt nor fish tae provide us wi’ food in this state.”

Geillis’ objection had more to do with arriving at the Callanish Stones before the equinox. For reasons she refused to elaborate upon, it seemed vital that they return to the twentieth century as soon as possible. Mid-summer would be too late.

After vigorous debate, it was decided that they would try to flag down a passing carriage in the morning. Jamie could walk, barely, but even he had to admit that the twenty miles to Ullapool were beyond him.

“ _Ifrinn_ ,” he swore as he slumped, back braced against a tree.

“What is it?” Claire asked.

“My purse was in my sack. I ‘ave a few shillings in my boot, but we still need tae pay for our passage tae Lewis.”

Claire brushed his sweaty curls away from his brow.

“Never you fear, my lad. I have a few tricks up my sleeve. Or down my corset, as the case may be.”

She withdrew the leather purse she had been wearing against her chest since coming through the Stones. Shaking it gently with a devilish grin, it made the distinct clinking sound of metal currency. Jamie’s eyes sparkled.

“Ah, my Sassenach. We’ll make a Scottish outlaw of ye yet.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nighean na galla - daughter of a bitch (ie. a bitch)


	23. Chapter 22

March 16, 1749, Stornoway, Isle of Lewis, Scotland

The ensuing days were a trial of epic proportions. “Like Odysseus,” Jamie remarked, when he was well enough to manage something like his typical dry humour.

“I’m not letting you out of my sight for ten minutes, let alone ten years,” Claire replied as they settled side by side in their narrow berth below decks of the _Seonaidh_ , a two-masted sloop that plied the Minch between northern Scotland and the Outer Hebrides.

After a long night during which Claire sat vigil over Jamie’s fitful rest, his dirk lying close to hand in case their attackers returned, they managed to hobble to the roadside. They must have seemed an astonishing trio to the merchant they waved down some hours later. A tall, pale and obviously injured Scot, an Englishwoman covered in blood, and an ethereal blonde woman with eyes like emeralds. It was only the promise of ample compensation that secured them places in his crowded wagon, next to a passel of chickens.

The road was rutted and stony, jolting even the two uninjured travelers to the point of pain. Jamie bit down on his lip and disappeared far inside his torment, a vacant look transforming his usual affable face. It was a technique he’d picked up in the time that they were apart, Claire realized, sickened. To not cry out or seek comfort by sharing the burden of his suffering.

She longed for twentieth century painkillers, but with none at hand, she satisfied herself by pulling Jamie’s heavy torso on top of her own, so that she might at least cushion the worst of the bouncing. His clammy hand clasped her own in silent gratitude.

“You’re not alone, Jamie. I’m here,” she whispered in his ear.

**

They took two rooms above a tavern in Ullapool. Claire set about trying to treat Jamie’s wound as best she could, while Geillis canvassed the port seeking steerage on a westbound vessel. After two days, both were relatively pleased with their success. While still weak, Jamie was able to move about slowly and eat the fish soup that appeared to be the tavern’s only fare, besides alcohol. And Geillis had spoken to the captain of the _Seonaidh_ , who was willing to participate in any manner of suspicious or illegal activity, so long as two pounds sterling found their way into his pocket. For once, Claire was thankful for the felonious nature of the average Highlander.

***

Their passage across the Minch was typical for the month of March. Which is to say, tempestuous with twenty-foot seas. Sick as a dog, Jamie tore open the catgut stitches Claire had so recently inscribed on his flesh, multiplying his misery tenfold. Claire kept her word and did not leave his side during the three days they were aboard ship, sleeping only in tiny, involuntary bursts. After the first day, even her iron stomach began to revolt. By the time they pulled into the harbour at Stornoway, Geillis was the only one fit to navigate the drab little town in order to find lodging.

“My sister,” Jamie insisted weakly when he was settled into his bed at the town’s only inn.

“We dinna ‘ave time, _a charaid_ ,” Geillis replied, slipping back into Gaelic now that they were surrounded by it at every turn.

“Ye’ll find the time, _boireannach meallta_ , or I willna be setting foot near those stones,” he threatened. “I didna journey all this way, near tearin’ my guts out, only tae leave behind my sister wi’out a word a second time. She needs tae ken I’m alive and well.”

Geillis frowned and muttered something about his current appearance making neither state particularly obvious, but she left the room without further argument.

***

March 18, 1749, Stornoway, Isle of Lewis, Scotland

Claire was slumped uncomfortably in a wooden chair, half asleep and half watching over Jamie’s slumber. His health had steadily improved over the past two days. His wound, once she had disinfected and sewn it closed again, showed no signs of infection. He even insisted on limping to the privy, mumbling something about never using a chamber pot for the remainder of his days. She had no idea how they were going to navigate the twenty or so miles to the Stones, but that was a problem to be faced tomorrow. For today, they were warm, well-fed, sheltered on dry land, and not being set upon by brigands. She would count that as a success. She only wished she could keep her eyes open long enough to enjoy the tranquility of the moment.

A firm tap on the door roused her.

“Come in, Geillis,” she called, too lazy to move. Their travel companion had been scarce of late, and she couldn’t say that she minded. Jamie didn’t trust his uncle’s erstwhile prophet and she couldn’t say that she blamed him.

The door swung open and a diminutive woman with black hair stepped into the room.

“We don’t need anything, thank you,” Claire dismissed, taking the woman for a serving wench.

Instead, the visitor rushed forward to the bedside, ignoring Claire entirely.

“ _Mo bràthair_ ,” she whispered, pushing back his curls with a well-practiced gesture. In his sleep, Jamie smiled. The stranger choked on a sob, her lips shaping mute prayers of thanksgiving.

“You must be Jenny,” Claire spoke after some moments of observing the touching reunion. “He’ll be so pleased to see you.”

The woman, Jamie’s sister, regarded her with an intense look that she now recognized. Though opposites in terms of colouring and size, there was no mistaking those fierce blue eyes that could shoot invisible arrows through your soul.

“Are ye my brother’s nurse, then?” Jenny inquired with a frown. Claire couldn’t help but laugh out loud, which only deepened the other woman’s visible discomposure.

“I suppose I am,” she admitted. “But I’m also his wife. Claire Fraser, nice to meet you.” She held out a hand which was rudely ignored.

“His wife?!” The question was followed by a sneer. “The laird o’ Lallybroch an’ ‘eir tae Clan Fraser wouldna wed a Sassenach, nae matter how bonnie. Dinna give yerself airs, lass. Nae doubt my brother is grateful fer yer… service, but ye may begone. His family will see tae him now.”

Claire was about to issue a sharp retort that would certainly add fuel to the flames burning in Jenny’s gaze, but a warm hand snuck out from beneath the covers and grabbed hold of her own, squeezing tightly in warning. Her patient was obviously awake and listening.

“Claire is my family, Janet, an’ I’ll thank ye tae show her the respect she is due,” Jamie spoke before even opening his eyes to look upon the sister he hadn’t seen in over four years.

“ _Seamus!_ _Tha na chanas tu meallta! Gu'n deònaicheadh Dia dhuit_ ,” she added, crossing herself.

“Our marriage is the least of God’s worries,” Claire interjected sharply, having picked up enough Gaelic to follow the flow of insults.

The two women stared at each other from either side of Jamie’s bedside, neither backing down.

“Sassenach, thas’ enough,” Jamie warned, pulling himself to a seated position with difficulty. “Will ye go downstairs an’ fetch me somethin’ tae eat?”

She wanted to object to being dismissed, but he looked up at her imploringly, asking for a rare demonstration of marital submission. She subsided. This was Jamie’s sister, and he knew best how to handle her.

Geillis was downstairs, flirting with the tavern keeper. Seeing Claire enter, she grinned smugly.

“I’m guessing we have you to thank for the arrival of Jamie’s sister?” Claire asked once they were seated together at a battered table.

“Aye. And it wasna easy, let me tell you. The family is still wanted as traitors tae the Crown, and arena usin’ the name Murray nor Fraser.”

“It’s a good thing you knew about those details from your, uh, life beforehand,” Claire suggested delicately, careful to not be overheard.

Geillis tilted her head sideways, like a perplexed hound.

“Claire. I didna ken the first thing about yer man’s kin. There’s nothin’ about them in the history books.”

She knew this, of course. Jamie had spent weeks poring over Frank’s collection of Scottish history books in the Lallybroch library and had found no mention of his sister or her family. She had just assumed…

“Then how did you know they were here? On Lewis?” she asked.

“Colum,” Geillis explained. “I tricked him inta tellin’ me where his niece was hidden. Twas he tha’ told me she went by Fitzgibbons now.”

Startled by the familiar name, Claire lapsed into silence. Murtagh’s family hailed from the Isle of Lewis. Surely it was just a coincidence.

“Well, however you managed it,” she continued after a moment, “I’ll forever be grateful to you for making it happen. At the very least, Jamie can travel through the Stones at peace, knowing that his remaining family are safe and well.”

There was a pregnant pause before Claire spoke again.

“I know you don’t want to tell us anything about our future, Geillis. But I can’t help but wonder why it’s so important for Jamie to return to the twentieth century immediately. Now that we’ve located his family, it would be kinder to stay for a while. Maybe go through during the summer solstice?”

“James Fraser can stay here fer as long as he likes,” Geillis surprised her by saying. “Tis ye tha’ must return tae yer time, Claire. But since ye’re no’ likely to leave wi’out the hard-heided dolt, I set about findin’ his kin.”

This was startling news. All this time, Claire had assumed Geillis’ aim was to return Jamie to the twentieth century, where she had reason to believe he would somehow spawn a new generation of Scottish independence. In truth, she thought Geillis was stark raving mad, but if catering to her delusions would see them back to safety and Brianna, then she was willing to indulge them.

“I don’t see how I have anything to do with secession. I’m not even Scottish!”

Geillis pursed her lips as though biting back the words she wanted to say.

“I ken ye willna leave wi’out yer man, and so the two of ye must go the day after next. How ye arrange that wi’ the lad’s family is yer business. All I will say is tha’ when the time comes, tis vital that ye be near tae a hospital.”

“When what time comes?” Claire asked, frightened at the implications. But Geillis refused to say another word.

***

They spent the next two days at the Fitzgibbons’ croft in the windswept countryside, surrounded by Jamie’s family and the smell of peat smoke. Jenny had married an old family friend, Ian Murray, who kept them all entertained with wonderful stories of his and Jamie’s youth. There were three children: Wee Jamie, who was seven and named after his uncle; Maggie, who was five; and tiny Kitty, who was barely two. It both healed and broke Claire’s heart to watch Jamie with his nieces and nephew. He was a man destined to be a father, and she prayed being a surrogate parent to Brianna would fill that need in his soul.

On the night prior to their departure, Claire left the warm confines of the croft to breathe in the crisp night air. It had been raining all day, but the clouds had broken as the sun set and a near-full moon was cresting over the horizon. She’d been so absorbed by the series of predicaments that had befallen them that she had lost track of its cycles. It watched down over her now, huge and mysterious, as though bringing her a message from the universe.

There was something undeniably otherworldly about this place. It was hard stones and hard-headed inhabitants, sweet rain-soaked breezes and the resinous tang of pine and heather. She hadn’t a mystical bone in her body, but she couldn’t help but feel that the barrier between magic and the everyday was particularly thin in the Highlands. How could she not, when she was living in a veritable fairy tale?

“Do ye mind if I join ye?” Jenny asked from behind the dry-stone fence against which Claire was propped.

“Not at all. I was just admiring the moonlight. It’s quite lovely, shining on the water of the bay.”

“A full moon for Alban Eiler. Tis a good portent for yer journey,” Jenny remarked.

Jamie had told his sister that he and Claire would be voyaging to the American Colonies on a vessel that was leaving Stornoway the very next day. As a traitor and enemy of Blackjack Randall, Jamie would never be safe on Scottish soil. It would be easier to start their lives over, in the New World. It was a lie that held enough truth to be told convincingly. Only instead of a boat bearing them over the sea, it was the Stones that would be bearing them through time.

“Claire,” Jenny continued, a rare hesitancy in her tone, “I wish tae thank ye. Fer all that ye’ve done for my brother. I dinna ken all that he’s been through, but what I do ken is that he wouldna be alive were it no’ fer ye. He loves ye somethin’ fierce. I ken I said some horrid things, when we first met…”

“Jenny, it’s fine. I understand, truly. I only wish we could stay longer with you and your family. And you must know, if I’ve saved your brother, he’s returned the favour a hundredfold. He is the best man I know.” She swallowed a salty lump that rose up in her throat.

“Och, yer only sayin’ tha’ cause ye met him after I beat some sense inta him,” Jenny joked, breaking the emotional moment. Claire emitted a watery chuckle.

“Perhaps you can teach me your tricks, before we leave. I’ve no doubt I’ll find them beneficial.”

***

The next morning Jamie and Claire bid a tearful goodbye to Jenny and Ian Fitzgibbons and their children. Claire wished for a camera, so that she could secretly capture their likeness, for Jamie to remember them by as the years smudged the lines of his memory. They promised to write, as soon as they were settled, but that was a letter that would never arrive.

Clasping Ian by the arms, Jamie loosed the belt that held his steel broadsword and handed it to his friend.

“What are ye thinkin’, _a charaid_?” Ian asked. “Tis a magnificent _claidheamh beag_. I canna accept it.”

“Ye’ll have more need of it than I, where I’m going, _mo brathair_. Use it tae protect those who we both love. An’ give it tae Wee Jamie, when he’s old enough.”

Jenny hugged Claire warmly.

“Potatoes,” she whispered in her sister-in-law’s ear. “Plant potatoes, Jenny. As many as you can manage. And make certain the children never lose their Gaelic, no matter what happens.”

***

Geillis met them just outside Stornoway, driving a horse-drawn cart she’d somehow acquired in the village.

“Climb in the back. We’ve got a ways tae go before sunset.”

They sat quietly as the cart bounced down the rough track, each lost in their thoughts. Jamie took Claire’s hand, and held it between his own.

“I would never force you to leave behind your family, Jamie, if you want to stay,” Claire said suddenly.

Jamie looked up quickly, his eyes bloodshot and strained.

“I tried, once,” she continued, “to make a difficult choice for you, and it backfired horribly. I don’t want to make that same mistake again.”

“Ye only wanted tae spare me pain, Sassenach, and I never blamed ye for it. Life is full of moments where chosin’ one path is barrin’ the gate tae another. Who’s tae say where the paths we dinna take may ‘ave led? What I do ken is tha’ I chose you, an’ there has never been a moment that I’ve regretted it.”

“Wither thou goest?” she gave him a tremulous smile.

“Aye. I will walk by yer side until our lives shall be done.”

***

Rather than a hill, the Callanish Stones sat on a flat peninsula of land jutting out into the Western Sea. As the sun set, the tip of each narrow stone caught its light and glowed like a candle. One by one the flames were extinguished, until only the tallest central stone was lit, a ghostly finger pointing at the vault of heaven.

Geillis led them down an alleyway flanked by lower stones. The wind blew, seemingly from the depths of the earth, tossing the dried grasses to and fro. Behind them, the full moon rose in perfect alignment with the row of stones, bathing the scene in opalescent light.

“Ye need tae hold on tae each other,” Geillis explained, her voice raised to be heard over the wind. “Dinna let go fer anything. Concentrate on a memory, a face, somethin’ that calls tae ye and begs fer yer return.”

They looked at one another and smiled. Brianna.

“Do ye remember wha’ I told ye, Claire? When yer time comes, ye must gang tae the hospital. Dinna wait on the midwife, or t’will be too late.”

They both startled, finally understanding what Geillis was implying. Surely Claire couldn’t be…

Just then the wind picked up until it became hard to stand upright. Claire’s hair fought against its fetters and Jamie’s plaid flapped wildly against his legs.

“It’s time!” Geillis called out.

Wrapping one arm around his wife’s waist as tightly as he could, Jamie linked the fingers of his other hand through hers. Their twin silver rings shone together in the moonlight. Inch by inch, they stumbled closer to the central stone. There were voices on the wind, but neither could make out what they were saying.

“Ready, Sassenach?” he rumbled directly in her ear. “Think of our Bree, aye?” She nodded in reply.

“I love you, Jamie Fraser,” she added for good measure.

“And I you, _mo nighean donn_.”

Closing their eyes, they slowly stretched their joined hands towards the cold surface. The air around them pulsed like a living heartbeat. The wind was so violent, it screamed in their ears. A moment, an eternity, a pulse of energy from above and below.

And then they were gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a charaid - friend  
> boireannach meallta - false woman  
> Mo bràthair - my brother  
> Seamus! Tha na chanas tu meallta! Gu'n deònaicheadh Dia dhuit. - James! What you're saying must be untrue. May God forgive you.  
> claidheamh beag - Scottish broadsword


	24. Epilogue

September 11, 2021, Edinburgh, Scotland

The klieg lights brought in by the television crews bathed the simple pale wood lectern in heat, humming like a hive of bees. He dabbed against the high expanse of his forehead with a handkerchief, hoping he wasn’t about to be broadcast to every screen in bonnie Scotland sweating like an anxious prom date. 

It didn’t matter how often he stood in this same spot, he never fully got over his nerves. Today especially, at the culmination of his life’s work, and that of his father before him. He twisted the coarse silver band he always wore on his right index finger, sending a brief prayer skyward for support.

The visitor’s gallery was packed. He could see his family in their place of honour in the front row: his wife, Mary; their three children, their spouses and the older grandchildren; and his sister Brianna, her silver curls reminding him so much of their mother.

He was doing this for them. For all of them. They had each sacrificed so much over the course of his career: their right to privacy, countless hours of his time as a father and husband. It hadn’t been easy, but the time for preparation was over, and the moment for action was now.

A bagpipe began its ancient, plaintive song, lifting the hairs of his nape as it never failed to do. He stood, his Fraser plaid brushing softly against the back of his chair, and waited patiently for the pomp and ceremony to finish. When it had, he stepped forward to the microphone. There was a kinetic pause, a moment of suspension before forging forward into the unknown. As if on cue, the capricious Scottish sun chose that moment to break through the overcast sky, bathing the wall of windows behind him in light.

“Ladies and gentlemen, my fellow parliamentarians, viewers and notable guests. I stand before you today, not as your First Minister, but as a citizen of Scotland. I belong to this country, and I am its servant. If you love Scotland, as I do, then you are my compatriot. If your heart sings for its mountains, its isles and its lochs, then you are my kin.

Throughout our history, there have been attempts to secure self-determination for our nation. Some succeeded for a time, while others failed, with dire results. Each of these efforts had this in common: they sought to excise Scotland from the rest of the world; to define, not who we were, but who we were not.

My father, who died only months before these Houses of Parliament were opened, was a Scot to the very marrow. He upheld our traditions, spoke Gaelic to his children and grandchildren, fought and suffered as a soldier to protect what he saw as the inalienable right of every Scottish man, woman and child: to shape their own fate with two feet firmly planted on land they could call their own.

My mother, as many of you know, was an Englishwoman for whom Scotland was home by choice, not by birth. She married my father, raised my sister and I in an idyllic free-roaming style in the Highlands, and devoted her professional life to the healing of anyone who found their way to her practice. My father would joke that there wasn’t a secret within a hundred-mile radius of my mother, because her patients trusted her with their confidences. She is buried next to him at our family estate, Lallybroch; returned to the land they both loved almost as much as they loved each other.

I mention this because it was from both of my parents that I learned what it is to be Scottish. It isn’t defined by your ancestors, or your tartan or your clan. It’s in the capacity of your heart to serve, of your character to endure every trial, of your tongue to always be ready to laugh at a wee joke, or your door to always be open to someone in need.

Past referendums have been characterized as a vote to free Scotland from its ties to England. We do not ask for such emancipation today. Our purpose, the aim which we seek, is not freedom from the English. We ask simply for Scotland to be free.

As the sponsor of motion S5M-20237, I, William James Murtagh Fraser, hereby move for a vote on the Referendum for Scottish Independence Bill previously debated in this chamber, that a question may be put to the people of Scotland on whether they wish to form an independent country.

All those in favour?”

A chorus of “ayes” was heard from around the chamber.

“All those opposed?”

A volley of “nays”.

A page approached his position in the speaker’s podium and handed him a folded piece of paper. Opening it, he felt a flutter in his chest, like a flight of doves beating their wings against his ribs. His vision blurred, and he briefly removed his glasses and swept a hand across the mist pooling in his piercing blue eyes.

“The result of the vote is 68 members in favour, 54 members against. The motion carries.”

There was a moment of stillness in which his life flashed before him.

Then the room erupted in a riotous cheer.

“ _Alba gu brath! **Saorsa** airson Alba!”_

It was done.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alba gu brath! Saorsa airson Alba! - Scotland forever! Freedom for Scotland!
> 
> Thank you for joining me on this adventure. I had no idea where it was taking me, but that is true of many fine journeys. Tha mi a ’guidhe gun èirich an rathad dhut.


End file.
